


After

by apparition



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Lucifer Season 4, Deckerstar - Freeform, F/M, Hurt Lucifer, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attack, Season 3 Finale, What Not To Do At A Crimescene, Winged Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Wings, devil reveal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-09 10:20:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14714214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparition/pseuds/apparition
Summary: Chloe comes face to face with the Devil. She's terrified, but it's his vulnerability that reminds her that he's still the same Lucifer.Mostly written as part of my post-finale healing process. We all want to know what happensafter, so here we are.NOTE: The first chapter was originally a one-shot, and can entirely stand alone if you're not keen on the WIP thing.





	1. FACE

Chloe stepped backwards across the floor, unable to take her eyes off the face before her. The face of the Devil. 

She’d known up on that rooftop, finally giving in to the evidence all around. Although, that had been an abstract suspicion; somehow the only explanation left when one of Lucifer’s stunts had gone so far past the measure of what she knew as reality that she’d been forced to acknowledge he’d been telling the truth all along. 

But this - this grinning, burning presence, lit up from within by something greater and vaster than she’d ever conceived of - this was no parlour trick. This was the proof she’d asked for. This was the Devil. 

The strange creature wearing Lucifer’s suit tilted its head sideways, its red eyes burning. 

“Detective?” 

Hearing his voice come out of those scorched, cracked lips was too much. She knew that face - Lucifer’s face. Underneath the broken planes of red was a familiar, proud nose, the arch of a brow. Hidden in those shadowed sockets, where those red eyes softened in concern, she saw _him_. It was all true. 

And as frightening as he looked, something more was wrong. For all that his eyes burned, they were caught in a heavy shadow. 

He’d killed Pierce. The man lay dead on the floor, dagger in his heart. A deep, twisted fear spread through her gut. 

Chloe took another step backwards, and froze. He’d saved her. Again. Carried her out of the middle of a firefight onto a rooftop, and when her back was turned, had vanished like he always did. 

She’d heard the sound he’d made as he left though - the sound of something powerful displacing the air. It had played over and over in her head as she’d raced down the fire escape, to where she knew he’d gone, desperate to get there in time. 

As she’d put it all together, all of the things he’d told her, that sound had finally silenced the last remnants of doubt she’d clung on to for far too long. It was the sound of something unfolding, as she herself was unfolded. The sound of wings. 

“Lucifer.” She breathed his name like it was the missing piece. The _actual_ Lucifer. _Her_ Lucifer. 

He was terrifying; he was familiar. She still felt that stab of primal fear that told her to run, to get as far away from this truth as possible, to put all of it away again to where it still made sense. 

But as Lucifer looked her over - lingering on the hole in her shirt where she’d had her own turn at being bulletproof, then travelling up to look right in her wide-blown eyes - she realised this was the truth she’d asked for. It was all laid out - every secret he’d kept there for the taking. She’d already been given the one that made him watch her like that. Now came the rest. 

His closeness became magnetic. What was he? Chloe took a few careful steps forward, drawn inwards as the roaring in her ears reached a crescendo. He was talking again, but she’d stopped hearing the words. Distantly, she noted the front of his shirt was riddled with bullet holes. That explained the gunfire she’d heard. It did not explain what had happened to her partner. 

Lucifer stopped mid-sentence as she traced a hand over the holes in his shirt. Six of them, she counted. Like when they’d first met. Behind them lay more scarred red flesh - but no bullet wounds. How had she been so blind? 

Lucifer was shaking her arm gently. The movement pulled at her chest, where Pierce’s bullet had been turned back by her vest. For a moment the pain there took over - she’d have a bruise for months. It hurt, but the pain was something she could hold onto. 

She closed her eyes, and while she could still see it there, that face, in her mind - it would likely live there for some time - the darkness helped. The hand on her arm just felt like _him_ \- the same steady grip that had held her when they'd found Charlotte. This was still Lucifer. As she opened her eyes, the world made a little more sense. 

He’d been asking if she was alright, she realised. She nodded reflexively before she could really think it over. That always worked, when she’d had those cases that would undo you if you weren’t careful. Be there for now. Deal with it later. It had been good advice before. But this was _after_. 

Chloe was still nodding, little short jerks, her breathing coming short and fast. Dimly she was aware she’d slid down to the ground, and was kneeling next to Pierce’s body. Her vision was going black at the edges. 

Not too far from Pierce’s outstretched hand lay a mess of long, white feathers, bloodied and torn. They formed a ring around a space on the floor - the space in which she’d been standing next to Lucifer when they’d been here before. _Before_. 

That rushing sound from the rooftop played again in her head, as she tried to imagine how those feathers had fit together. It grew louder, and louder, a steady drum in her ears. Her vision narrowed to a pinprick of white marble tile, and that sound was everything. 

“ _Chloe?_ ” Hearing her own name brought her back. And the way he said it, as he did so rarely, sunk down deep into her, where that knot of fear had clenched, and replaced it with something warm. He was worried about her. This impossible, burning creature who had saved her so many times. That she had saved too. That cared - that maybe did more than care. 

He’d knelt down next to her, cradling her shoulders as she stared at the floor. It was easier, not to look. “Chloe,” and again, she felt that warmth, “this is the part where you berate me for rushing off without you, in case you’ve forgotten.” She wanted to say something to that, to make him understand that she hadn’t forgotten. 

When she just nodded uselessly once more, Lucifer continued, quieter, “It’s over. He’s not coming back. You’re alright.” He said that last part like he didn’t quite believe it himself.

Chloe looked up at him, tracing the strange, broken ridges that ran across his head and the way the fire in his eyes deepened when he looked right at her. The place where his eyebrows should have been was drawn tight in an all too human expression. 

Lucifer didn’t know. He didn’t know what he was showing her. Did he think she was upset over Pierce? Here he was, trying to work out what was wrong with her and yet completely unaware that his mere presence was unravelling reality as she knew it. He’d always been terrible at reading her. Somewhere deep she laughed, but that part had been pushed so far back that all that came out was a softer, longer breath. 

The world had widened when she’d named him, and now the rest of it sprung into focus. 

The arm of his suit had been slashed. She reached out to touch that too, watching her hand move forward, trembling, as if it belonged to someone else. As she made contact with the fine fabric, he flinched, and she jerked her hand away, looking back at his scarred face to see a flash of pain. She felt the hot stickiness on her fingers, and looked at them wonderingly. 

“I’m afraid he did get me there. And my favourite suit too. Will his crimes never cease?” 

Despite the return of his usual levity, there was an unusual tightness in his tone. Something more here had shifted. More than that face. 

“Lucifer… what...what have you...” His name came easily, but the rest was a mess. She tried an easier truth. “He tried to kill us. I thought he...”

“He’s gone, Detective. To a place he truly deserves. I made sure of it.” The note of pride there was unmistakable. And something else, something far darker. 

A place he deserved. He’d made sure of it. _Hell_. There was no metaphor that would ever encompass that particular truth. It was an uncomfortable thought. 

Pierce’s body looked small, splayed out on the marble tiles, all that fierce cunning drained away in death. _Cain_ , she reminded herself. Lucifer had told her that. That was true too. One of Maze’s knives stuck out of his chest, cruelly thrust in and up towards his sternum. It had to have carved through bone. 

Now, this made sense. 

Bending down, Chloe pulled a latex glove out of her jacket pocket. There was one on her at all times - a long-term habit that had proven useful at countless unexpected crime scenes. She wiped her fingertips off onto the edge of her shirt, Lucifer’s blood soaking into the white fabric, and snapped it on over her right hand. 

She examined the knife for a moment, before pulling it hard. It stuck for a bit, then came free with a sucking noise. She stood up, holding the thing in her gloved hand. Did the Devil have fingerprints? You usually needed skin to have those. For a moment the fear flared up again. Blood oozed along the blade and onto her hand, but she paid it no mind.

“We have to get rid of this. And…” she walked over to the edge of the circle of feathers, “...these.” She crouched down, facing away from him and began to push them together in a pile, working fast. 

It would all go away. She’d clean it up. 

The movement gave her body something to do. It stopped her from thinking. There were more feathers further out, so she crawled forward on her hands and knees, and scooped them towards her. 

One of them stuck to the ground, the drying blood like mortar. A tiny shred of flesh clung to the base of the feather, where the vanes softened into down. Part of a bullet had split the shaft, and a fragment was still lodged there. She picked at it with the dagger. 

“Detective? Unless you have plans for a rather macabre feather duster, I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve?” He was behind her now. 

She stood up and turned to face him, wild-eyed, with the bloody dagger in one hand, and a fistful of feathers in the other. 

“You’re right. There’s too much. It’s too… We’ll have backup here any minute. We’ll never find them all.” Her voice was rising. “Your blood is all over this scene. We'll have to make sure Ella- no. Ella can't.” A stray feather escaped her fist. “He's the lieutenant. And I shot him. You need to- I have to-”

“Detective, stop!” Lucifer moved to place a hand on her shoulder, but she jumped back from it, and thrust the dagger out in front of her with both hands, shaking wildly. He focussed on it, bewildered. 

Chloe tightened her fist around the feathers, feeling the sharp points of them dig into her palm. She kept the knife out in front, “You’re… you had… when they shot at us, you had…” 

“I realise the wings can be a bit much, but-” He seemed to struggle for a moment, then continued, “They saved you. It was worth it, whatever the cost.”

There had been a price, for saving her. There was logic here. She took a careful breath, and in a controlled, tight voice, asked “What did it cost? For that.” Chloe looked away from his burnt, twisted face and over at the man he had killed. 

“Detective?” Lucifer followed her line of sight, and took a shaky breath. “I had to do it. I had to _make sure_.” There was a note of hysteria in Lucifer’s voice as he continued, “He tried to kill you! And you would have gone… where I can’t go. I thought you had, for a moment.” 

Now, the pain in his expression was eating through the fear she’d felt earlier, and replacing it with numb realisation. It was so easy to understand him now. He hadn’t known she’d been wearing a vest. The Devil himself had thought she had died, and when he’d saved her instead, had punished her would-be killer. He’d killed for her. 

The point of the dagger wavered. Blood dripped from the handle, and onto the white tiles. Her hand gripped it tighter, white-knuckled. 

Lucifer looked at the blade, finally registering that it was pointed at him. For a long moment, he just stared at it. Then in a much quieter, hesitant voice he asked, “Are you _afraid_ of me, Chloe?” 

This undid her. All of it was there, in those burning eyes. Everything they had shared. The dagger clattered to the floor, and the feathers in her other hand rejoined their bloody brethren. Lucifer watched them fall, unable to look at her. 

His question hung in the air between them, laden with a profound hurt. Seeing him this quiet, this uncertain, the rush of panic that she'd almost drowned in was replaced by a new certainty. With robotic calm, she peeled the glove off and tucked it away. 

She answered, the words drawn out of her by the simple desire to tell him the truth. “Yes. I am.” 

Chloe saw that admission hit home, in the silent anguish that played across his face. 

Her voice shook as she continued. “But I should know better.” She reached up to place her hand on his strange, cracked cheek, and he went abruptly still beneath her. Her breath caught at the same time as his. Did this hurt? 

She kept her touch light, as she explored. His face had the texture of ancient leather, smooth and warm. The jagged red edges of his flesh met in the wrong places, as if he’d been been peeled away and abruptly reassembled. Behind his eyes, the bottomless fire dimmed for a moment in shock as he felt her touch and finally realised what he'd revealed. 

Lucifer tried to take a step back, but she moved her other hand up and held his face in both hands, keeping him there. She’d left a bloody smudge on the top of his cheek, the glistening streak a darker shade of red. He brought a hand up to place over hers, and froze when he looked at it properly. Scorched, broken, torn. Like the rest of him. 

A low moan escaped him. He tried to pull away again, but she held him there. If he fled now, from this, she knew it would break her too. 

“It’s… back? What have I done? Why isn’t it going away?” She’d never heard him sound so lost. 

Chloe couldn’t answer. Her own face felt strange now. Cold, numb. Wet. 

Lucifer reached for an explanation. “He- I killed him, Detective. Murdered him. I killed a _human_.” There was a new expression burning there now, but not one she'd seen him wear before, on any face. Fear. 

Tilting him down a little closer, Chloe traced a finger along his jawline, feeling where the hard edges of his flesh met. His fear made her brave. 

“I know,” she said.

He'd looked away as he’d felt her explore his face, but now his eyes remained fixed on hers. Her thumb smoothed across his lower lip, gently remembering the shape of him. 

“You shouldn't be here.” It was strange to feel his muscles move under her fingers as he spoke. 

“I shouldn't.” She could feel him shaking. 

“Chloe, I'm the-" 

She kissed him, a quick press to shut him up, and looked at him carefully. 

“No you're not. Not to me.” It was all she'd had to say before, when he'd tried to tell her the truth. It settled a little deeper then, that it was still true after. 

Later, she’d think about how warm he’d felt. How she hadn’t even flinched. How the cold fire that face had lit in her belly had guttered into nothing when she’d seen how frightened he was. 

There were sirens in the distance now, but he didn't seem to hear them. He was staring at her lips, not breathing. 

She let him go, and bent down to pick the dagger up again, and buy a moment of time to think about what she'd done. She didn’t bother putting the glove back on. 

He was the _Devil_. Parts of it did make sense - if this was what he’d been showing to suspects to terrify an answer out of them - she saw why it was so effective. But it didn’t quite fit. The Devil cared. That wasn’t in the bible. 

When she straightened, he was looking at her in awe. He hadn't moved an inch. 

The sirens were out the front now. The LAPD would be here in moments. She tugged his hand, and felt the rough digits tighten around her own.

“We need to go. Now. They can’t see you like this.” There was movement at the front of the mansion, at the entrance. A voice called out from somewhere outside - Dan, she realised. 

That broke his reverie. He looked around, surveying the room. “The car’s out the front. There’s no way we can get out to it.”

“And you can’t drive like...that.” They both blanched, not quite ready to acknowledge what had changed between them. She looked up towards the stairs, then noticed him staring at the great, broken window above them. She climbed up towards it, stepping over the splinters. 

“Is this how you-” She fell silent. Where he’d flown in. Of course it was. 

She turned back to him, but he hadn’t followed. 

“Detective. I’m… so sorry.” 

He rolled his shoulders, and several things happened at once. His face contorted, a cry of pain parting his lips. From his back, a blur of white and red folded out of him with a strangled crunch. Shuddering, he unfurled an enormous pair of wings, torn and mangled with blood. The stark white feathers stood out against his red flesh, but the blood on them was the same colour. He gasped, and staggered a little, clenching a fist. 

Wood splintered in the next room - Pierce must have locked the door behind them. 

Chloe had half a second to draw in a breath, before Lucifer bounded up the stairs, wrapped his arms around her, and carried them both out the window, his wings spread wide.


	2. FLIGHT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said there'd be more of the show, so that means there's more of this fic...

It wasn’t the sudden absence of the ground that knocked the breath out of Chloe, or even the sharp, hard tug of the air around her as it was displaced by Lucifer’s powerful wings - both of these things paled against the warmth of him as he cradled her close to his chest. 

It was the return of that sound. That heavy, solid rush of colliding realities that filled all of the space left in her brain as she pressed up against his shirt. Each beat thrummed through her; telegraphed from his body to hers. It was the sound of nothing human, but she knew it like she knew her own heartbeat. 

With her eyes screwed shut, the outside world was reduced to the repeated bunching and release of Lucifer’s muscles as he pulled them both through the air. The rhythm of it was hypnotic; here, in this liminal space, the events of the day were a far-off vagueness, something that had happened to another Chloe. She’d been in the air for moments, or centuries. Part of her was still standing on that rooftop. 

She was sinking while flying - the further he carried her, the more she untensed, letting all of it bleed out of muscles that had long used up their supply of adrenalin. With the same strength of solid ground, she was suspended in his two arms as if they were merely those of a strange, skyborne chair. A dull ache spread out from her bruised chest, under that vest. There was no Pierce. No murder. No unforgiving litany of uncomfortable truths. 

And though she felt it as her face pressed against his neck - that torn, rust coloured skin that had unravelled her reality - there was no Devil here either. 

Only Lucifer. 

Chloe knew they were high up. Half of her face had been numbed by the wind, and the cold of the empty air had begun to penetrate her boots. The desire to look down was strong, but outweighed by the instinctive knowledge that she must remain still. It was the same as ever - blind as she was, she could only trust him. And hold on. 

Bits of her hair lashed against her cheek. The neat, rational part of her that wasn’t currently flying considered that the ponytail had been a practical choice. 

The rest of her was laser-focused on Lucifer’s wingbeats, as they began to falter. 

He was pulling his wings harder against the air now, and for less. They no longer rode the wind, but fought it. 

It was subtle; a slight off-rhythm downstroke, the extra drag of air through his lungs. Then it was not. The left side of him convulsed, and they lurched to the side. Somewhere, lost in the rush of the sky, he cried out. 

They dropped in the air - a few feet, or hundreds - before he levelled out again. Chloe’s fist tightened around the lapel of his jacket, gathering as much of it as she could. The feeling in that hand was gone, white knuckled around the stiff fabric. Her other hand held that wicked dagger with the same animal urgency, the dark crescent safe in the pocket between them. It mattered that she had it, but the reason why had remained behind on the ground. 

Their climb into the sky became frantic, powered by the fading strength of desperation. For a moment, he seemed to rally, lifting them back up with several quick thrusts - then his entire left side gave way, buckling under the weight of the air. Through his shoulder, a sickening pop followed a deep, grinding sound, and this time, his cry of pain went right through her, forcing her eyes open against the streaming wind. 

The world was a chaotic blur, with no up. She was yelling, all of the air pulled out of her lungs and joining a kaleidoscope of blue, white and red as they tumbled, her stomach clenched tight against the free-fall. A wing appeared, too close to her, as if it had curled against itself. The long flight feathers were bent back in places, matted with blood, and entirely gone in others. Lucifer twisted again in the air, making Chloe’s stomach hammer painfully against her throat, before the wing snapped into place once more, and they were wrenched backwards, coming out of the dizzying spin. 

The city rose up in front of them, and for a moment, she glimpsed the Lux tower, tilting against a Sunset Boulevard backdrop. They were dropping steadily towards it. In the distance, Lucifer’s balcony stuck out of the side of the building like a beacon. 

He was gliding now; whatever he’d done to his wing, he was clearly unable to do more than keep it locked in position. 

Chloe tilted her head forward, squinting into the air current, and looked below. Ahead of them was another building, its flat, geometric rooftop rushing up towards them with alarming speed. With solid ground in sight, she relaxed. 

Then she realised he wasn’t slowing down.

He was yelling, but nothing could be as important as the rapidly approaching concrete. The boxy bulk of an air conditioning unit loomed ahead, and Lucifer tilted around it, narrowly avoiding the giant fan intake. He swung back over to the right, perilously close to the edge of the rooftop, clipping the edge of a wingtip against a low brick wall. 

The collision spun him sideways, over the lip of the roof, and then he let go of her.


	3. FALL

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me and my winghangers. I couldn't do it to you again, so I've waited until I've got ahead a little bit to post. Sorry about the wait!

There was nothing but the air. It pulled at Chloe, downwards, and though she clawed at the emptiness, it refused to bend to her will. She was merely human, after all.

Unlike Lucifer.

As they’d hurtled past the edge of the roof, she’d had a glimpse of what lay ahead. A short distance beyond the empty space, the white, even concrete panels of a much taller building loomed. They’d been headed straight for it.  

She’d seen him survive impossible things, and come out with his sense of glee intact - but this time, with the pain of those damaged wings dragging him down, she sensed a thrumming worry in him that no bullet had ever caused.

The moment she’d felt his grip loosen, the knowledge that he wouldn’t survive a collision with that building was a dead weight. And so was she.

Lucifer’s words from earlier echoed in her head, drowning out the roar of the air as she fell.

_You would have gone… where I can’t go._

He hadn’t just been talking about losing her. He’d been talking about where she’d go _after._

That wasn’t right. That was-

Chloe’s boots smacked through a hard barrier, and then the rest of her was submerged.  She cried out as freezing water closed over her head, choking as it entered her mouth and nose.

Instinctively, she struck out with her arms, thrashing against the suffocating pressure. It gave way around her, pushed away by cupped hands, but as she screwed her eyes shut against the sting of it, she lost sense of where she’d entered.  

While the water was more forgiving than the air, she was sinking further from the light, the weight of her boots pulling her down. A jolt of panic went through her as an elbow jarred against something solid, the unknown boundary a reminder that she was deep. She had to get out.

Twisting to reach her feet, the rushing sound of the water filled her ears. The zipper on her left boot would not come free. Each time she had a grip on it, she’d turn in the water, her legs instinctively kicking out for balance, and the boot would slip out of her hands.

This had to be done calmly, or she’d run out of air. The pressure on her lungs was building, but Chloe ignored it. What was the point? This could be done, but not if she panicked. A memory of Trixie at her first swim school lesson flashed behind her closed eyes - she’d told her daughter to relax in the water. Don’t fight it. Let it carry you. Trixie had been so scared, but she’d jumped in anyway. She was so brave. But she still needed her mother.

Forcing herself to move slowly, Chloe grabbed her leg to brace it. The zipper began to move, and then the boot was off. The other boot was far easier.  

The difference was immediate; now the weight was gone, her toes kicked out, restoring her balance. There was light coming from somewhere, but it was impossible to pinpoint with her eyes closed.

Rough concrete grazed the back of her hand, giving away the secret to her escape. That was down. So _there_ was up. She kicked hard, thrusting upwards and away from the bottom, lungs burning.

The surface broke open, revealing a burry view of the blue afternoon sky.

Spitting out the water she’d swallowed, Chloe turned around in the water, adjusting to this new reality. The long, white shape to her left seemed solid; the stark, unwavering line of it the boundary of this half-way world. The promise of it was enough for her to kick hard against the heavy drag of her clothes, her lungs pushing out against the strain of the bulletproof vest where it encased her chest. She found the edge of the water, and hung from it with her fingers, blinking away the water in her eyes. It _was_ solid - smooth and immovable. Marble. The water gushed up against it, disturbed by her passage.  

A swimming pool. It made as much sense as anything had today. The high walls of hotel balconies surrounded it on all sides, presided over by the tall monument of that white building. Chloe tried to fit it into what she knew of the city, shying away from recalling the top-down view she’d had only a few minutes earlier. Where was the Lux tower? It had been so close.

Where was Lucifer? The thought of his glowing eyes burning their way through her locked her fingers tight onto the edge.

Coughing, she pulled herself up, and over the smooth, curved marble lip, dragging her legs onto pristine white tiles. More water came out of her, joining the saturated poolside. The tiles were soaked right up to the pool fence - clearly, she’d made a hell of a splash.

Brain jarring on the word _hell_ , she flopped over onto her side, her coughing turned to deep, shaking breaths. A splash. She’d survived.

Her soaked jacket settled into her like a heavy, second skin. She gazed upwards, the numb cold of her wet clothes and the hard press of the tiles distant discomforts, preyed upon by far larger concerns. A small white cloud was emerging from behind the roof above her - she imagined it had the texture of feathers.

She’d almost died. Shouldn’t that be terrifying? There’d been a sort of mechanical fear as she’d hit the water, the kind that pushed you forward before you knew you’d even begun to move - and yet the vestiges of that strange calm she’d felt in Lucifer’s arms still clung to her, as if it had yet to evaporate in the afternoon sun.

The balconies surrounding the pool looked oddly askew, as if they were the anomaly and she the everyday visitor, entering from the sky. She blinked, and the world tilted back into shape. The existence of the pool felt like a miracle - it _was_ a miracle - they’d been low enough to scrape the top of that roof, yet it had still broken a fall of a few stories. She'd hit the deepest part. If Lucifer had let go any later, she’d have likely broken her neck.

Chloe frowned at the empty blue sky. He had let go, hadn’t he? His grip on her had remained firm until that last second, while the rest of the world tumbled past them. She'd come away from him so quickly, it was hard to make sense of what exactly had happened. 

The memory of that final descent played over once more. Descending, locked into a glide. Too fast, and Lucifer yelling as that concrete approached. There hadn’t been enough room as they’d flown too low, the speed of their descent and high building walls an inevitable conclusion.

But he had turned right, at the last moment, to avoid a collision. That had been deliberate - she’d felt his whole body strain, as he poured the last of what he had into turning. And he’d let go of her directly over the pool.

The cold of her wet clothes was a slow creep up her spine.  A second, much larger cloud scudded into the sky behind the first, the white of it slowly devouring the blue.

It hadn't been to avoid a collision. He'd been aiming for this pool. Madly diving to reach it, despite the danger the nearby buildings possessed.

In giving her a safe landing, he'd given up his own.

Where was he? Raising her head from the wet marble, she looked across the water to the opposite side.

At the far end of the pool lay a heap of bloodied feathers.

Below the balcony on the second story, a horrible, wide red streak was smeared along the beige brickwork.

Chloe was half-way there, moving in an unsteady stagger as her wet socks slipped across the slick tiles, before she froze.

Lucifer wasn't moving.


	4. FEATHERS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might need a second angst tag. I promise he’ll be ok? I need him to be ok too.

There was ground beneath her feet, a spreading puddle testament to her presence upon it - yet she stepped forward into a void, numb everywhere but at the centre where a tight pain coiled against her ribs.  The last few steps towards him were to the rhythm of colliding continents, an inevitable passage of centuries scored by the insistence of her rabbit-fast heartbeat. _Faster_ , she told herself. But each step was a reluctant confirmation; he did not stir.

Her knees hit the tiles hard, one hand scrabbling for purchase as she lost her balance.

Lucifer’s left wing covered him almost entirely, splayed across his body like a strange, bloody shroud. The sweeping arc of it was drawn up over his head, as if in protection. Red gouges decorated the spaces between feathers. She hovered her hand over the top edge of wing, looking at those gouges, hesitant to break the barrier between past and present. _The sound of ricocheting bullets. Someone screaming. That same sinking, gliding feeling - of being in the air._ The events put themselves together like bits of a jigsaw, but the final picture was an abstract mystery. She drew her hand back. Those were bullet wounds, and strangely shallow at that - the glint of something metallic shone out of one - and yet they seemed inconsequential against the clear strength of the limb. That wasn’t it. As he’d summoned these _things_ , she’d seen the pain on his burnt, scarred face - it was just as expressive as his real face. But it had been an angry sort of pain, and as he’d spread the wings wide and leapt forward, they’d been powerful - bloodied but beautiful.

Something else had pulled him out of the sky.  

The long flight feathers parted where one of his legs stuck out, the tailored trousers incongruously normal against their backdrop of the bizarre. The bent tips of his right wing were just visible, caught under him, where he lay in the sun. The afternoon had not yet lengthened to cover this end of the pool in shadows - but the feathers seemed duller than before.

Earlier, when she’d sat manic on the floor of the loft with fistfuls of them, they’d been bright white, shining against the tiled floor. When he’d summoned these wings, they'd also been starkly, shockingly bright against his red flesh.

That was no longer the case. The vanes looked drained of life, the shafts vaguely greyish. Like this, it was hard to believe they belonged to a living being and were not the remnants of an ambitious craft project.

Chloe could just see the line of his back where the wings emerged, the distinction between suit and pinion lost in an obscure mess of plumage. Registering what was wrong with that took longer than it should. Were there holes for the wings? Did they come with the suit? She catalogued that thought for later. However this worked, he was injured, and that came first. He’d explain it all to her later. She’d ask directly, so he couldn’t dance around an answer. It wouldn’t be easy - he was far too good at avoiding the truth, despite his insistence on presenting it - but she’d be clever. She’d get it all out of him.

If he was still alive.

A soft, strangled noise broke the quiet of the poolside, and Chloe faintly registered that it was her. It hurt to look at him.

His right wing was bent beneath him. At its apex, something white and jagged stuck out from the place where the arch of it should have swept down into graceful continuation. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, the gleaming jut of it lost against the feathers.

Bone.

Bile rose up against the back of her throat as the jagged thing resolved into grim reality. It poked out from amongst sinew and gristle, a spreading ooze of blood leaking onto the pool tiles. She clamped a hand over her mouth, anchoring herself. She’d seen worse before, if perhaps far more mundane than a broken angel wing.

But this was Lucifer.

Near the top of the wing, the hint of burnt red fingers emerged past the bloody down, as if they had been reaching upwards.

As her own outstretched hand made contact with the tips of those red digits, a low, painful moan stirred in the body beneath those feathers. A wave of relief broke against the returning wall of her fear as she moved around him, pulling that hand into hers. He was alive.

“Lucifer?”

He hadn’t fallen that far, judging by the evidence on the second story. And the way his wings were drawn around him, it seemed likely he’d tried to use them to cushion his fall. She shut up the part of her brain that wanted to tell her he’d probably fallen much farther before. _Devil._ The word was a muffled shout against the fragile wall she’d pushed it behind. _The Devil._ She drowned out the black wash of uncertainty it drove at that wall with the name she knew far better.  

“ _Lucifer._ ”

His hand twitched in hers, and she whispered his name again like a summons.

Maybe he’d be ok. She clung to that idea, the only acceptable outcome. Nothing could kill him. There was probably a reason for that too, but for now it was enough to remember that Malcolm had killed him once, though she’d spent a long time pretending otherwise. And he’d stood up. He’d stand up again this time. He had to.

Chloe moved to trace a hand along the top edge of the wing over him, finding the thick curve of it amidst the wreckage of feathers. Compared to the cracked, hard texture of his skin, the feathers gave way beneath her touch as if she glided through liquid silk. On the surface, they formed a sleek, soft shell that dissolved below into an insubstantial warmth, the delicious heat coming from the strong limb they protected. A few of the small, round ones fluttered away into the air as she found purchase at a point part-way along that was mostly intact.

This wing was nowhere near as damaged as the other, but she moved it upwards carefully, dreading what she’d find underneath. Her last batch of first aid training had definitely not covered this.

The abrupt hiss of pain almost made her drop it, but she held it there, steadily. It wasn’t heavy - in fact, despite the breadth of it, it sat in her hands with the weight of a single sheet of paper. Yet it felt solid, as dense and rigid as if it were a sheet of metal. As if these were not constructions of flesh and… _bone…_ but merely a clever collection of feathers, held together by the sheer force of their resistance to logic. The idea that these things had carried them through the air seemed impossible - but so had the idea that a being the world believed was the purest incarnation of evil regularly broke into her house to make her omelets.

Lucifer’s face came into view, the crevasses of his ravaged skin a dark ochre under the shadow of the wing. Eyes closed, that eternal fire hidden away, he seemed less strange, and merely _other_.

He lay curled up on top of the feathers of the other wing, limbs slack - but whole. Chloe let out a breath. Keeping the wing propped up with one hand, she stretched out forwards to gently shake his shoulder. She smiled as his eyes cracked open.  

“Hello,” she said, borrowing one of his favourite greetings.

The eyes flamed into life.

“ _Detective,_ ” he breathed. “You’re alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to ElenaCee whose 'Devil's Trap' was one of the first Lucifer fics I've read on here, and my favourite handling of the reality of that devil face.


	5. FRACTURE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I traumatised myself with that last bit. Also, I have no explanation for the varying lengths of these chapters. They simply are.

This time, the sharp thrill Chloe felt at meeting those eyes was a warm one, coming not from the low place in her gut the fear had, but from somewhere closer to her centre. She lay down, putting her head level with his, beneath the canopy of his wing. The cold of her wet clothes was making her tremble, despite the warmth of the sun on her back.

“So are you.” She kept her voice steady for his sake.

Chloe looked him over, wanting further evidence. He blinked, as if having trouble focusing. Did he have a concussion? Was that even possible?

She reached out to transfer a hand to his cheek. Alive, warm. Not human. The broken firmness of it was still unexpected, but she kept her hand there. So, he was the Devil.  She suspected she’d be unpacking that thought for the rest of her life. It still made very little sense. But right now, he was her partner.

Chloe kept her voice low, and soothing. “Hey. You’re going to be ok.” There wouldn’t be any help. Not with him like this. She’d have to set that break, somehow. Moving him too much was probably a bad idea. The pain had to be excruciating. “I had a bit of an easier landing though,” she ventured, hoping to keep him talking as she sorted through their options.

Lucifer flinched as if she’d hurt him, head jerking back from her hand, though his eyes remained fixed on her. The rejection stung. Chloe withdrew, debating whether to try to keep him still.  She’d meant to give him an opportunity to tell her how to help him, but it was obvious that she’d said the wrong thing.

Maybe she could be more direct. “Anything, uh, else... broken?” She wanted to ask him to move his legs, to move anything, but the words wouldn’t come.

Carefully lifting the wing a little higher, she checked him over. It was hard to tell if there were more injuries, his suit hiding most of his long form. Moving the wing like this didn’t seem to hurt. Was that a good sign? Or could he not feel it? What if he’d paralysed himself? Which vertebrae were the wings connected to? He’d felt it when she’d grabbed his hand. Why couldn’t he feel this? What had happened to him in the air? The lack of any remark at her intense scrutiny was a little unnerving. He tracked her with his eyes, far too quiet.

“Lucifer?” she tried again, wanting him to silence her rising panic.

Those cracked lips parted, as if about to speak, but he closed them abruptly. While he was looking more and more alert, he’d adopted a tense stillness. That was definitely not right.

He abruptly pulled a hand underneath him, through the feathers of the wing below, and tried to push himself up. As the angle of his back changed, he winced, and slumped forward.

“Hey, careful.” Chloe moved in front of him, holding his shoulders steady. It was no use trying to keep him still. Her partner had never truly done anything he truly didn’t want to; he was Lucifer. _And more than that. So much more than that._

The dam in her head was in danger of breaking. She dug her fingers tight into his shoulders, holding herself there as much as him.

If he wanted to get up, it was pointless trying to stop him. If she even could - she suspected her strength against his, even like this, was a gnat against the sun.

Still, he let her hold him, though the tenseness in his shoulders did not abate.

Chloe had seen him hurt before, and each time he’d seemed to take it as a challenge, as if daring the world to try and hurt him further. This was different. Lucifer had nothing to say, no taunting remark. It was clearly taking everything he had to keep from crying out.

He tipped his head back, his focus going far beyond where she kneeled in front of him, and up to that blue sky. With his lips pulled back from his teeth, the expression he shot upwards was tight, raw fury. The full sun fell across his face, the red skin shining as if it was lit from below. His eyes burned hotter, and for a moment the heat of the sun was before her, and something lesser warmed the back of her neck.

Chloe remained locked in place, caught by that glow. Before her, Lucifer begun to move.

As he struggled to his knees, the broken bone realigned itself, the shudder of the movement travelling up to where Chloe gripped him. A deep, drawn out growl rumbled out of him, sounding halfway human.  

That small spark of fear lit up in her gut once more. He was dangerous, yes. As long as she’d known him he’d held the threat of a feral creature, lured back from the wild by the tenuous promise of warmth and comfort. It had always been there, beneath the delight. Perhaps because of it. But as she watched him slump forward once more, tipping his head forward against her forearm, the fear dimmed. He was not entirely wild - he rested against her with an absolute trust that in his pain, she was safety.  

In her hands, a fallen angel.

She didn’t say anything as he grabbed onto her upper arm, and used it to lever himself gradually upwards. The catch in his breath spoke volumes as he shoved the left wing out of the way, clearly unable to move it. He was still looking through her, every movement of his body reflected in the taut grimace that twisted that scarred, awful face.

Bracing a leg against the ground, he straightened, his right wing dragging as he twisted it out from under him. Chloe rose with him, as he kept his grip on her arm, though he was much taller than she was. The fact of his weight, transferred onto her was alarming in itself - never, for as long as she’d known him, had he needed any more than a hand up.

As if reading her thoughts, he let go of her, stumbling a little as he pulled back. A few more feathers drifted to the ground, to join several more that clumped together where he’d been lying. He stared at them until they’d settled, then reached up to grab the top of his left wing. Closing his eyes, he gave it a sharp tug.

“Hey!” Chloe repeated in alarm. She’d felt that tug herself, unthinkable after seeing how the tiniest movement of that wing in the wrong direction had been so painful. He’d kept his face carefully blank, but there was no way he’d recovered that quickly. “Are you-”

“I’m fine.” He was not. The lines of red along his forehead creased as he gave the wing another tug. This time, the wheeze of breath was a giveaway.

“Is it…” What was he trying to do? She stepped forward, reaching a hand up to his. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, darting away to look across the pool towards the balconies.  

The abrupt return to his feet was a welcome relief; barring the ever-present red of his bare flesh, and the ruin of those wings, the stubborn refusal to tell her what was happening was entirely the Lucifer she knew. Yet his clipped replies were entirely out of character. Clearly he was going to be ok, but something was very wrong.

He stepped backwards, slipping out of her reach, and looked across the pool. “I’m fine.” He was saying it to himself this time, more than her.

Chloe rolled her eyes, dropping her hand. This was familiar. “Oh really? So is that how you usually wear them then?” She gestured to his wings. The left wing hung limp, refusing to tuck tight against his back, and the right wing dragged from the point it had been snapped in half. They made it hard for him to walk, as he paced along the edge of the pool to the shallow end. The tightness in the way he held himself made it clear he was merely hiding the pain.

Moving the wing again with his hand, he threw a reply over his shoulder as he surveyed the poolside. “I usually like them cut off, but I’m taking a break from that.”

The rushing sound in her ears grew loud again, as his words settled into her mind.

“Cut them…. _off?_ ” she repeated. Reluctantly, the dots connected themselves, into the shape of the twin scars she’d once seen on his back. Two crescent shaped, rough things that he’d claimed he’d asked Maze to inflict on him. She’d thought it had to have been some kind of tattoo, that he’d had cut out.

And he’d mentioned them again not long ago - that they kept coming back, despite cutting them off. He’d talked about it like it was gardening - a quick prune. She’d dismissed it as part of his general Luciferness.

A shudder passed through her. The whole time, he’d been hacking through blood and bone, mutilating himself. And she’d ignored it.

“It’s certainly not easy to do - I always went for the joint because of it. This is a lot messier.”

The words came from the pool edge, and it took a moment to register that she was still standing, staring at this red-skinned creature, who wore Lucifer’s suit and talked about carving bits of himself off as if he was a Sunday roast.

“You… what?”

“Much less pleasant than my usual adventures with joints but,” he grabbed the wing and wrenched it hard, pulling it up against itself, “oh, _bastard.”_ There was an audible popping noise, and the sharp hiss of air passing through Lucifer’s teeth, as the limb realigned with its socket.   

Chloe’s stomach protested the sound. It had carried across to her clearly, accompanied by nothing but the soft lapping of water. Briefly, she was back in the air, at the moment it had all gone wrong. No. She wouldn’t go back to that. She was standing firm on the ground, the growing numbness in her wet toes notwithstanding. But as he reached up towards the bone poking out of the other wing, her feet moved of their own accord.

“Lucifer,” she called as she stepped forward. With his back still facing her, it wasn’t until she locked onto his wrist, his hand poised to perform a maneuver that would probably do even more damage, that he turned to look at her properly, a wary light in his eyes.  

“Aren’t you-” he stopped. He sounded confused, looking at the place where she held his wrist.

“Aren’t I what?” Chloe stepped right in front of him, pulling his wrist down, carefully avoiding the wing. The sun glanced off his face, giving it a weird, dancing glow.

“Going?” He spoke the word like it was an entire sentence. Chloe was starting to see through his act now, the nonchalance a front for the rising anxiety that was beginning to spread from his eyes. His left wing seemed a little less off-balance, now sitting at the same height as the other, broken one - yet he held them awkwardly, the small feathers that lined their tops standing up a little. Every part of him was focused on her.

Oh.

It mattered, how she answered this. Did he really think she’d leave? The revelation that she held the power here changed everything. Making her voice as steady as possible, Chloe tried to reassure him. “If you think I’m leaving you here like this-”

Lucifer cut her off. “Really, Detective. I’m fine.” Was that the third time he’d said that? Why did he sound so abrupt?

She shook her head minutely, raising her eyebrows in expectation. _The Devil,_ that distant voice insisted. _The Devil doesn’t do what you say._ She still held his wrist, as if she could truly make him answer.

But he did, capitulating under her stare like always. He gestured at the broken wing. “I let it take the brunt of the impact. They’re actually pretty tough, despite your interference.”

Her interference? And he was clearly _not_ fine. She wondered at her ability to still become so irritated with him in such a short amount of time, despite the overwhelming infernal, angelic presence before her. Apparently, turning red and sprouting wings hadn’t cancelled out some of his more annoying traits.

Lucifer had noted her eyes narrowing. He nodded again towards the broken wing. “It’ll heal. They’re frustratingly good at it.”

He seemed far too confident for someone who had recently crashed into a brick wall.

Chloe let go of his wrist. He was probably right. “Still, after a fall like that-” She paused, eyes widening as she realised what she’d just said.

Then again, to _hell_ with it. There was likely no other way to get through to him. She gave him a smile. “Well. I suppose you’ve had worse. And this place looks at least three star -” she waved a hand at the empty balconies, “a cut above eternal damnation, maybe. Then again, we haven’t tried the buffet.”

She was a little breathless. Was she really joking about this?

But the effect on Lucifer was miraculous. For a second his head twitched, the result of some kind of internal glitch. Then a laugh bubbled out of him like an escaped convict fleeing an island prison.

Wanting to hear more of it, she continued, “The pool’s a bit cold too. I thought you had better taste in hotels.”

He couldn’t help himself. “There wasn’t a lake of fire handy. Best I could do in a pinch, really.” He looked shocked at her giggle, but pleased.

There was a glint in his eye that had been missing ever since she’d first seen this other face, and the return of it now was as much a comfort to Chloe as her joke had apparently been to Lucifer. He was finally looking at her directly.

His gaze stuck on her wet jacket. With the cold fully set in, she was shivering properly, the tremors beginning at her chest and travelling along her arms. Lucifer gestured to it, stopping short of actually touching her.

“You really should take that off.” While the lack of innuendo in his suggestion she undress was a notable absence, this was progress. And it helped, hearing more of his voice emerge from that face. It reminded her who he was. He was right too - she was freezing. It was a wonderfully normal problem to have.

“Here.” As he spoke, he shrugged his suit jacket off his shoulders, tugging the sleeves off his arms. He offered it to her.

Chloe took it numbly, wondering why the simple gesture was so jarring. She was half way through robotically pulling an arm out of her heavy wet wool sleeve when it occurred to her that he’d removed his jacket without any sort of obstruction from his wings. _From his wings._

The being that stood in front of her had wings. He glowed with hellfire. He joked about falling from heaven, but he actually had.

_She was talking to the Devil._

The thought was far too large a cog for the clockwork of her brain. She froze, half-out of her jacket, one hand gone far too tight where it clung to Lucifer’s own jacket. She was shaking hard now, from more than mere cold.

_Devil._

That fragile border between what she knew and the unrelenting truth before her had been utterly breached; that last stretch of distance she’d kept from what he truly was swallowed by the tide of that word.

_Devil._

Her own name, from a long way away, sounded small against the weight of that word. Why that name? Why Chloe? It buzzed around her, tugging at her, an insistent fly. Why anything? It was strange. Why be anything at all, in the face of _that_.

The universe became larger, and her own place within it smaller. Like a distant sun reduced to a speck of bright starlight, her own name was tiny. There was so much more than the indistinct sound of that word. The shape of it was lost against a backdrop of eons. Still, it called to her, full of concern.

“Chloe, no, _please._ Come back.” A soft warmth settled across her shoulders.

She supposed that somewhere in the universe, a star had exploded, bathing her with its fatal glow. It burned away at her, rubbing her arms. The name was a soft plea now, gone ragged. Shouldn’t it come apart, be pulled into nothing? How could anything last like this? But it wouldn’t let go. It burned.

The world became simple again. She wanted that warmth, so she returned to that safe place, where she’d hung in the air. And that warmth was all around; it had carried her.

She blinked, and focused on Lucifer’s face, his eyes blazing like twin suns. He’d tugged his jacket over her, and was softly stroking her arms. He said her name again, and it became hers once more.

She’d stopped shivering, and he sighed in relief as she finally blinked and focussed on him properly.

“There you are,” he said softly.

Begin again. Small pieces.

“We flew.” The statement was all she could manage. Attempting to articulate what had lain beyond that wall in her mind was more than she had space for, the vast open void too full of the presence of something more than human. They’d flown. That was enough.

Lucifer nodded. They were very close. He still had his arms around her, and at some point she'd settled against his chest, staring up at that face. _That face_.

“Lucifer.” She named it. That helped.

The answering smile was strangely soft on the harsh planes of red.

“You’re the Devil.” They were bigger words, but she managed. It didn’t need saying, but doing so freed a doubt that should have been unbound long ago.

He nodded, watching her.

There was something wrong with that though. It took a moment to shepherd the words together, to make the sentence.

“But you can’t be, the Devil’s nothing like you.” There, that was the part that needed solving.

His smile grew a little wry at that, curling up at one end.

The pieces could be put together. They could make sense. He was still a mystery, but he was a solvable mystery. She just had to make it simple, to go through it piece by piece. What came next?

“I fell.” That came next.

The smile slipped from his face, replaced with the haunted stare he’d worn when he’d first woken up. He gently disentangled himself, stepping further along the pool edge. The chill of his absence was a shock.

“I thought I’d killed you,” he said quietly, once again dropping his gaze down to the pool surface. The words made no sense. Neither did his strange, closed off posture.  

He’d killed Pierce. Not her. He was getting it wrong.

Chloe watched as he bent down, to where shallow steps rose out of the water. He folded himself gracefully at first, but as a wingtip caught against the ground, he stiffened in pain, grabbing the marble lip to steady himself. Chloe wondered whether she should hold it for him.

What was he doing?

Delicately, he reached his hand down into the water, leaning out far over the edge. He was getting the sleeve of his dress shirt wet. Despite everything, it still looked good, apart from the slit where his arm had been slashed. Chloe looked down at herself. In socks, and clinging wet trousers, she was a mess.

Well, he’d always had all the style in their partnership. She pulled Lucifer’s jacket tighter around herself, the familiarity of it a comfort.

He straightened, holding something curved and gleaming. Drops of water glinted in the sunlight, running off the edge, but the sun refused to catch the object itself. Chloe started. It was Maze’s dagger.

Lucifer walked over and held it out to her, handle first. “Do you know why you took this, Detective? I wonder if you know what it does.”

Chloe frowned. It was the murder weapon. Of course she’d taken it. There was no case without it. She opened her mouth to say so, but nothing came out.

Lucifer sighed, and tucked the blade away in a trouser pocket.

“Maybe later.” He made as if to rest a hand on her arm, but stopped short, altering its course to throw up both hands before him, palms out.

That was supposed to look non-threatening, Chloe realised.

“Can you-” the words died on his lips, and he huffed in frustration. “Could we-” he began again, but that attempt was similarly capsized.

She examined the tough red skin on his palms, wondering if he was really like that all over.  

“Detective?” he said it hesitantly. There it was. A return to something vaguely normal. Chloe thought it was a better word than Devil, although the weight of him saying it was similarly heavy. It meant more than the two of them standing here. It was a link to before.

The dagger. Pierce. Trixie. Dan. Murder.

Her title was a gateway to the outside world, and she gasped as the memory of that dagger embedded in her ex-fiance’s chest resurfaced.

She drew her shoulders up. Digging into her pocket, she struggled for a moment with the wet lining, and pulled out her phone.

“I don’t think…” Lucifer trailed off again, watching her carefully.

It wouldn’t turn on. She stabbed at the power button, willfully ignoring the water that seeped out from the keys as she turned it over.

“Here.” Lucifer’s voice was a quiet entreaty. He had a new offering for her now - his own phone, lying flat on one of those red palms.

Chloe took it, and dialed Dan’s number. The phone was ringing before she realised what she’d done.

Dan’s voice came out of it against her ear, like a voice from another planet. How could he sound like that, just the same as before, like nothing had happened? She listened to him for a bit, demanding that Lucifer explain where he was.

“It’s me,” she whispered into it.

“Chloe? Oh thank God.” She flinched at that, but he couldn’t hear that over the phone and blithely continued. “Where are you? Are you alright?”

She took too long to answer, so he started again, another round of frantic questions.

“I’m with Lucifer,” she got out.

“Are you ok? Chloe? Pierce is dead. What happened to you?”

That was too many questions.

“I’m here. I’m ok.”

She saw Lucifer grow a sad, relieved smile at her words. She marveled that it was true too.  

“Tell Trixie I’m ok. Dan, I can’t come home. There’s… something wrong.”

“Chloe? Tell me. I can help you.”

She looked at Lucifer’s face, and his glowing eyes.

“No, I don’t think you can. Not with this.”

“Look, whatever happened with Pierce, we can sort it out. Things are tense here, but, well. We’ll sort it out. I can’t talk now, but-”

“It’s not about Pierce. Dan, I need you to look after Trixie, ok?”

“Of course Chloe, but-”

“Lucifer’s hurt.” It seemed the easiest way to get her urgency across.

“Ok. Alright.” She could hear him breathing slowly, trying to calm down. “I’ll send an ambulance. Just tell me where you are.”

“Dan, do you remember that last Christmas we had? The one where you-”

“The one where I dropped the turkey. Chloe, you’ve never let me forget that. Why? What is going on?”

That was funny. There was something funny there. She should probably laugh.

“No, Dan.” How did he always know what to say, while maintaining his near-constant state of obliviousness? “I meant the present you got me.”

“Oh. I thought you-” she could hear the emotion choke off his reply. “Chloe, please tell me what’s wrong. Please.”

“I should have thanked you. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“Chloe? I’m coming to you. Just tell me where you are.”

“Thank you, Dan.”

She pressed the button to hang up. The phone rang again immediately. This time she pressed the power button down hard, until the screen went black.

It had felt good, to hear him. To get a message to Trixie. She handed the phone back to Lucifer, wondering why she was crying.

“What exactly did he get you?” Lucifer’s curiosity had overridden whatever distance he’d been trying to maintain. “Was it that bad?”

Now the laughter came. It rushed out of her, in gasping sobs. She’d hated it, when he’d given it to her, the most ridiculous present she’d ever received. It had seemed like a rebuke at the time, a gesture of vague superiority. Of knowing more than she did.

She supposed Dan had, for once. He’d actually gotten it right.

Chloe took a breath, letting the end of the laughter trail off, taking the fear with it. She looked at Lucifer, biting her lip. He wouldn’t think it was funny.

He stood there, patiently waiting, so she obliged.

“A bible. He gave me a bible.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment with one-word chapter titles starting with the letter "F" that you'd like to see. No need to mention the obvious, this is Lucifer after all.


	6. FAULT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please blame Lucifer for any subsequent blasphemy.

Predictably, Lucifer did not approve of the suitability of the bible as a present. Chloe’s answer had shocked him out of the strange quietness he had adopted, and brought about the return of his indignant loquacity. His voice was loud against the stillness of the poolside; the slight echo off the walls highlighting how empty the place seemed.

“Typical Douche move, bad literature at Christmas” he scoffed. His expression grew distant, red eyes narrowed. “I'll never understand how they made such an exciting story into such a boring read. Really. Horrendous writing, and little regard for the facts.” He shook his head, the small feathers just above his shoulders puffing up a little, where they weren't matted with blood. “Honestly, I tried to tell them to write a better ending, but they didn’t listen to a word I said.” He paused, thinking. “Well, some of it might have gone in.”

Oh no. All those things Lucifer had said. The nonsensical rants about his father, his utter certainty that Charlotte was somewhere better. The affirmation that Pierce was somewhere worse. All of it.

All those things were true. There had been no denying it, the moment she’d seen this other face, but hearing him talk about the bible as if he was there - _he was there_ \- made the knowing a tangible, digestible thing. She suddenly had a vivid memory of him picking up a particularly sad looking apple in the precinct kitchen, and asking how he was supposed to work with it.

It was relentless; as much as she tried to stuff it all back into its box, it wouldn't go back in.

None of it was madness. None of it was theatre.

And the reason Dan had given her that ridiculous present - that had been real too. They’d had such a huge fight about it at the time. It had hurt, a reminder that they were far too different, that reconciliation was growing more distant. It had touched a nerve too - he’d been trying to reassure her, to heal an old hurt. But it hadn’t worked, then.

Dan had tried to explain it to her, but she hadn't listened. She'd been so sure there was nothing _after._

But there was. It was all real, and that meant that even though she’d hated Christmas without him, her Dad was somewhere. Somewhere better.

The knowledge was a tiny rock in the vast torrent of revelations, and she clung to it, the hope it offered just enough to keep her afloat.

Lucifer had stopped speaking, his attention back on her. She heard him swear softly, the sudden crassness at odds with his usual delicate speech. The worry in his eyes was evident; while the glow in them was no less fierce than it had been earlier, they were a shade lighter, an orange-yellow like the dancing tips of a fire. Their changeability was fascinating; in the short time since she’d first seen them they had run through a wide gamut of emotions. Earlier, when she’d joked about hell, they’d been lit with a glee that burned almost yellow. She wanted to see that again.

Now, they matched his posture. Contrite. Cautious. Seeing him like that was almost as jarring as his otherworldly appearance - Lucifer Morningstar did not apologise. And he was the opposite of cautious. She knew that well enough, and yet here he was, tensed as if he hovered over a landmine.

He thought she was panicking again, she realised.

She'd had enough of that. It still felt like she was drowning, being pulled downwards by the weight of the truth before her, the way the water had tried to claim her - but the same logic applied to this too. She had to stay calm. There was always a way out.

His voice broke the silence, hesitant. “I did it again, didn’t I? I made it worse.”

It was no wonder he struggled to understand her sometimes - he wasn’t human. And yet, like so many times before, he seemed almost too human, every emotion a bonfire that burned wherever it wanted.

She tried to answer. “No. No. You- I- I can’t do this now.” She ran her hands through her hair, feeling the wet strands catch in her fingers. They'd left a wet patch on Lucifer's jacket, where it covered her shoulders.

They’d get out of this. From Lucifer’s expression, she’d only heightened his worry with her answer. And however much he tried to stand as if he weren’t in pain, the way his shoulders had hunched were a direct tell. Now, off the ground, the broken bone was concealed by feathers, but the way his right wing bent at a sharp angle where the other one didn’t was sickening. Had his feathers been that grey before? It was darker near the break, but she could see the colour spreading through both his wings.

Chloe was briefly ashamed; while he was standing there trying to conceal how much that break was hurting, she’d been zoned out, lost in a haze of confusion.

She was better than that.  

For the first time, she took a good look around them. Since she’d pulled herself out of the water, Lucifer had occupied her full attention. It was hard to look away from that scorched flesh, and those damaged wings, but wherever they were, it wasn’t safe, out in the open with him like _that_. They needed to move. Lucifer’s own impact must have been dramatic, and she was sure her own splash must have been loud. Why had nobody come?

The poolside was strangely barren, plastic furniture stacked all at one end, under a short awning. Little palms sat neatly in decorative pots, although several of them had shed leaves onto the pristine tiles. Some of those leaves had escaped into the pool, collecting at the shallow end. Over at the deep end, where the building opened up into a patio, a blue tarp was rucked up against the wall, having come loose from where it had covered an elaborate hot tub. Considering how expensive the place looked, it was in surprising disarray.

She skipped over the red stain on the wall above them - she didn’t need reminding that her partner was hurt.

There were glass double doors nearby, that led into a large open lobby, though she couldn’t see much of it through the closed, heavy curtains. A large chain hung across the doors, looped around the long, metal handles.

Turning back to Lucifer, she frowned. They’d been standing there a while. “Is this... safe?”

He tilted his head, trying to read her. Chloe suspected he had no idea what she meant.

Before she could rephrase her question, Lucifer lowered his head, not meeting her eyes. “Yes. You’re safe. I won’t harm you again. I vow it.” The catch in his breath had nothing to do with the pain in his wing, and hearing it hurt Chloe too. “For what it's worth Detective, I'm so very sorry. I didn't think. I thought I would make it. I should never have-"

“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I’m sorry I never believed you.”

His answering blink was confirmation - he had been expecting something entirely different. He took a step backward, and stumbled. Chloe reached out to steady him as a wingtip brushed against the ground, a grunt of pain slipping out of him. He latched onto her arm again, reaching out to her automatically, as he righted himself.

He let go of her immediately, but she didn’t move. Lucifer looked down in surprise to where she held him, an arm on his hip and another on his shoulder.

“Tell me how we fix this,” she said, marvelling at how calm she sounded. The warmth of him under her hands was soaking into her, and so she pulled herself closer, lining herself up against that heat. She closed her eyes, head resting against his chest. It was like they were in the air again.

“ _Chloe._ ” The broken sigh of her name was the least devilish thing she’d heard from him. He continued, the rumble of his voice threading through her. “You can’t. You can’t forgi-”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she murmured against him.

She felt him tense, and then, “I murdered your ex.”

“Right after he shot me,” she followed.

“They’ll suspect you. For disappearing.”

“I shot him too.” She’d thought it through, a background process while she processed the divine.

“I didn’t even realise you’d seen my real face. I thought I broke you.”

“I’m still here. And you got us out of there.” She held him tighter at the thought of flying with him, careful not to touch his back.

“And nearly killed you. What if I hadn’t made it over the roof? You’d be-”

“Stop. It wasn’t your fault.”

Lucifer pulled back from her, his eyes a deep red. They shone, and with the sunlight chasing away the shadows, their edges glistened. He raised a hand to her cheek, and answered, full of regret. “It was always my fault. I am the devil. I was _made_ for it to be my fault.”

That was ridiculous. “And when have you ever done anything you were _made_ to do?”

She got a smile for that one, but he had a reply ready.  

“When it was you asking.”

The devil himself, in her hands.

She couldn’t leave that unanswered, and so she raised herself up high enough, and kissed him.  He jerked back, making a small noise of surprise, but then relaxed completely, giving her free reign. This time, it wasn’t a quick press. She let herself sink further into that heat, pressing every bit of forgiveness she had into him, hoping that he understood.

By the tight curl of his hand on her cheek that slipped around to hold the back of her neck, and deepen the kiss, he did.

She pulled back, a little proud of his dazed expression. Had she really done that?

Lucifer looked like he was wondering the same thing. “Are you ever going to warn me when you do that?” he asked, a little out of breath.

“Probably not.” That hint of yellow was back in his eyes, and Chloe delighted in putting it there. “Now, you need to tell me what to do. I’m not a…” she looked across at his wing, and frowned, “bird doctor.”

He let out a huff of laughter. “First of all, I am not a bird. Also, I think the term you’re after is _vet_ , which is equally offensive.”

Shaking her head, she held him at arm's length, mapping his face. “No, birds definitely don’t look like that.”

He turned his head away. “As soon as I can change back, I will. I’m sorry you-”

“Stop that,” she warned.

He turned to look back at her. “Why? Are you going to kiss me again?” he asked impishly.

She forced herself not to smile, and failed. Having him back felt wonderful, but a slow trickle of facts were starting to make themselves known in her recently reinstated cognizance. He was leaning on her again. Without realising it, she suspected. There had to be somewhere she could take him.

She looked out across the pool, and up at the balconies. “Where are we exactly? This place looks deserted.”

“Jonas Walters,” he replied, as if it were a fact everybody knew.

“What?”

“You met him once at Lux. Terrible gambling habit. Got far too deep into my whiskey too. I had to put a stop to it. Nearly cost him this place.”

“He’s the owner?” She decided not to comment on his own whiskey habit. Then again, he had an immortal liver. That explained a lot.

“Well, technically, I am. But only until he’s back from the rather boring booze-free holiday I sent him on. We made a deal.”

A deal with the devil. The phrase had quite a bit more weight to it now.

“What… exactly… was this deal?”

“I promised I’d keep this place afloat, stop it going into receivership, as long as he kicked his habit.”

That sounded quite a bit like a favour, and not much like a deal. “And that’s it.”

“Well, yes. He promised. I think he’s got about four months now.”

“So, in the meantime, nobody’s here.”

“Well, yes of course Detective, that was the point of aiming for this place. When I realised I wasn’t going to reach Lux, I set my sights a little… lower.” He dropped his eyes suggestively, to look down her body. It felt like far too much attention for her rumpled,  soggy state, but for once she didn’t entirely mind his lascivious wandering.

She was attracted to the devil. There was an entire kaleidoscope of things wrong with that.   

Lucifer was moving towards the doors. Right.

“A bit much to expect you have the key on you?” Chloe examined the windows, wondering if they would break easily. He didn’t answer.

Chloe followed him, noticing how slowly he was going. Sliding an arm low around his waist, avoiding his wings, she nudged him forward. She felt him rest a little bit of weight on her, and she kept them walking forward, a few steps at a time.

She got him over to the glass doors and sighed in annoyance. They were reinforced - they’d need something heavy to break through. The windows looked the same. It made sense - these places were supposed to be secure. The huge padlock hanging off the chains that bound the front door was a reminder that their presence here was not exactly sanctioned.

Lucifer looked at her, as if slightly ashamed, and waved his hand in its direction.

The padlock fell to the ground.

Chloe stared at it, her mental re-cataloguing not quite keeping up with each new fact. That’d be something they’d discuss later. It explained how he’d managed to get past her deadlock, at least.

“Now you know,” he said, watching her reaction.

“Now I know”, she repeated, woodenly.


	7. FIRE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to put on a certain Hendrix tune for this one.

Chloe could sense the stare at her back, and didn’t need to turn around to imagine the twin pricks of fiery red behind her in the dark hotel lobby. Being able to think beyond a few words was nice, but those eyes still left her slightly unglued.

The torn-up wings, the scars that made up his skin - these were enough to alter the world as she knew it.

Those eyes though - they were a glimpse into a true beyond. They altered reality as she knew it.  

For as long as she’d lived, fire had never been _alive_.

Although, as they’d made their way further into the darkened building, they were noticeably dimmer. Lucifer was fading fast; she had to get him off his feet.

He’d tried to object when she guided him forward, saying that she had to leave, to clear her name, but the effort of moving sapped the spirit of his protests, leaving them a vague murmur of resistance. It had been easy, despite the size of those wings, to place a hand on his lower back and gently propel him forward. Concerningly, he’d given up trying to conceal the amount of pain he was in, instead focusing on remaining upright.

Chloe was uncomfortably aware that she was guiding a being who had once rebelled against God.

His father.

Like a little pebble at the edge of a river, she waited for the coming flood, to be swept downstream again. She remained on the banks though; the thought unexpectedly impotent.

Was she getting used to this? Or had she reached the point where all things became so implausibly real, that their significance had lost all sense of scale, boulder and pebble equally dwarfed by that river.

Chloe suspected she was merely exhausted.

The bank of light-switches she’d found by feel alone had done nothing as they were flipped. Clearly, the power to the building was off. She left Lucifer propped up against a laundry cart while she explored further, ignoring the noise of distaste he made as his hand slipped and plunged into the piled up sheets. That was the limit of his complaint though; she could hear the cart groan as he replaced his grip on the cart’s side, letting it take his weight.

The makeshift bandage she’d looped around his wing was certainly not doing any good - it’s previous life as a hammock hadn’t leant it any particular medicinal properties. Hopefully it was keeping the limb straight, rather than weighing it down. She’d barely been able to see what she was doing, fumbling in the dark with the thick material, acutely aware that she was pulling out feathers.

He’d let her though, and as she’d pulled the unwieldy limb back into the shape she thought it belonged in, there’d been no comment but that unblinking stare.

How well could Lucifer see in this darkness? Was he as blind as she was?

Chloe doubted it. She’d been particularly blind for a long time, concerning her partner.

However those eyes worked, they made Lucifer easy to locate. Against the blackness of the large, open space they hovered like unsettling nightlights, marking him out, but doing nothing to dispel the surrounding darkness.

They followed her with unerring ease across the lobby floor, past the giant desk she’d almost walked into, and around the large potted palm in the centre of the room.

Apparently, he could see her fine. It made the darkness oddly comforting, the space rendered familiar by his presence.

The Devil in the dark.

Those horror movies had been completely wrong.

She continued exploring. The elevators were out; that wasn’t surprising. It also meant that accessing any of the actual rooms would have to be done via the stairs. A crack of light escaped from under what had to be the fire escape - Chloe moved towards it, drawn forwards like a moth.

Clean sheets, running water, a clear, flat surface, light. Her list wasn’t long, but it had been frustrating to fulfil as she’d stumbled through the ground floor. The place was luxurious, but without power, mostly useless to her. Chloe was in the process of opening the fire door, when Lucifer’s voice breathed in the dark just behind her right ear.

“Detective?” The word was soft, but intense, and she turned back to find it underscored by the weight of those burning eyes on her again.

The short exclamation she let out at their sudden presence, inches away, was echoed by Lucifer’s own sharp gasp. He jerked backwards, the rustling of his wings loud in the stifling darkness.

She registered the fact that _she’d_ just startled _him._

The would-be Prince of Darkness was pressed up against the lobby wall, breathing hard.  

Movies always got it wrong.

“Detective, I didn’t mean-” Lucifer trailed off. The eyes vanished, his outline folding into a smaller shape.

She reached out, finding his arm, and slipped beneath it before the tenuous lean he’d adopted against the wall could give way.

“Hey, it’s not much further.” That was a lie. He’d never make it up those stairs.

The stare returned, enveloping her. This was a deep red, like embers that had raged fast and hot, and then finally settled to burn long through the night.

It was ruining her night-vision.  

“You’re still here.” It was barely a whisper, his breath tickling the hair at her temple.

“Lucif-”

He twisted towards where she held him, the shifting of his feathers along her back a distracting flutter. “How can you still be here?”

The words sounded small and quiet in the echoing darkness, stripped of their usual velvet assurance. She stayed silent, trying to unpack the confusion in his tone. Of course she was still here - he was hurt.

She needed a change of clothes, and possibly a new heart after the work this one had recently been put through, but she was alright. Lucifer, on the other hand, had nearly killed himself getting them down here, and away from the scene of Pierce’s death. She owed him her gratitude for that. The thought of having to give a statement right after receiving proof of the divine was not particularly inviting. Especially while holding the murder weapon.

She realised she hadn’t answered.

He’d noticed. “You should go.” These words were cold and hard. He slipped out of her grasp, and tugged the fire door open. Chloe blinked against the harsh fluorescent light that leaked from the stairwell.

Did he want her gone? The thought was brutal in its arrival.

The door had almost closed again, sealing out that startling brightness, when she heard him trip.

She was in there immediately. The hammock had come undone and lay on the concrete landing, it’s sheer inadequacy obvious in the light. That had been a terrible idea - one of those sheets from the laundry would have been far better.

Next time, she’d secure the wing, get it close to his body.

Next time, she’d meet that stare without letting it burn her alive.

Almost buried by his feathers, Lucifer was down on one knee, gripping the metal railing tight. Chloe tried not to look at where the thick metal curved in the shape of a handprint. The right wing had bent back against the wall at a cruel angle, the fresh blood the only bright note against the dimming grey of his plumage. There was a spray of black feathers along the top now, as if he'd taken a bit of the lobby’s darkness with him.

If he wanted her gone, he’d have to do a better job convincing her he was alright.

He tensed as she moved closer. “Detective…you have to tell them. Your beloved LAPD. What I did.” He wouldn’t be quiet, each word puffing out while he pulled himself back up, ignoring her hand. “You should have told Daniel, on the phone. You should have let him take you away from this.” Away from him, the unspoken implication clear.

With sudden clarity, she realised why he wanted her gone. Why he'd been so quiet and abrupt.

He hadn't believed her. He still thought he was to blame.

She tried reason. “Lucifer. He was trying to kill us. That's not on you. Or me. They'll see that.”

“Your faith in that wonderfully corrupt system of yours is inspiring, but it's not their judgement I'm worried about.”

That seemed like the sort of statement that deserved a deeper kind of attention, the kind she'd never given his strange, off-the-cuff explanations before.

Lucifer gestured at his face, drawing a circle with a scorched finger. “As soon as this goes away, I’ll turn myself in. Tell them exactly what happened. I’ll say you were never there. You weren't, after all, when I killed him. ” He didn’t give her a chance to explain why that wouldn’t work, his voice growing frustrated. “That was the whole point of getting you out of there, Detective!”

That was far too much to answer, but as she watched him sag against the railing, the fire in his eyes losing against the char that surrounded them, something he'd said rung louder than the rest.

It would… go away? Chloe was silent, wondering why it hadn’t occurred to her that he could return the face she knew. It did make sense; how else did he walk around, convincing everyone he was nothing more than outlandishly eccentric?

“When?” she asked softly.

“When what?” He climbed a stair, painstakingly slow.  

“When will it go away?”

That froze him solid, mid-step. The moment it took him to turn and show her the wide, confident grin he'd stretched across that face was brief, but she'd seen it.

Terror. He hid it well, but that grin was just another mask and Chloe had seen too far past the ones he usually wore to be fooled by this one.

“I expect I just need to rest. Bit of beauty sleep will do it.” He pulled himself up another step. There was a large clot of fresh red blood gathering at the top of a long feather. “You don't have to worry. I won't seek you out.” The grin was slipping. “I'll leave you alone.”

He was attempting to pull away again, using the railing as leverage. The constant attempts to escape the support he obviously needed were wearing thin on Chloe; had he always been like this?

Then again, this was Lucifer; of course he had. Despite the time he put in with Linda, the only advice he ever accepted was his own. Trying to make him do something he didn’t want to was like trying to convince the ocean not to let the tide come in.

Even when he’d been merely Lucifer, she’d held back from trying to control him. After all, that was how they worked together. He blazed forward wherever he wanted, and she smoothed his path. And collected the wreckage behind him.

Would he ever admit he needed her? Probably not.

Still, she knew him better than he likely realised.

Maybe there was another way to do this. She thought back to the hotel owner, and Lucifer’s inadvertent generosity.

“How about I offer you a deal?” Chloe asked, hoping he took the bait.

That got his attention, turning him back to her from the fourth step. “Oh?” he said, relaxing slightly, the prospect well within his purview.

She took advantage of the momentary pause in his misguided crusade for self-reliance, and reinserted herself at his side, letting his wing rest on her back. Without the railing between them, his facade was that much more obvious - he was trembling, very faintly.

She drove it home. “Let me do this. Let me help you. For as long as you need me to. Then I promise I’ll go to Dan. I’ll tell him what happened.”

Lucifer frowned. “Detective, I can manage.” His eyes flicked to the side, skating around the near-lie. He spoke slowly, measuring each word for her, and coming up just short of certainty. “And that’s not much of a deal. What do you get out of it?”

His self-awareness was, as usual, impeccably absent.

“Lucifer. Please.” There it was. She’d asked.

She watched the effect the word had on him with detached wonder. Fine muscles worked under the red leather of his face as he struggled with her request. With her hand tucked around his side, she felt the tension in him give way, gradually ebbing as he settled closer against her. There was a shift to something warmer in his eyes too, a brightening. The tide was going out.

Lucifer gave a minute nod. “Alright.”

Before she could fully appreciate what that assent meant, he added “But not here. I have a suite on the third floor. 301.”

They were not climbing three flights of stairs. He was insane.

Maybe she'd been overconfident, negotiating with the Devil.

She gave it another shot. “Just to the next landing. The closest room.” The light through the windows would have to do, unless she could find a torch.

Lucifer’s smile was smaller this time, but genuine.

“No. All the way up. It'll be worth it. Besides, I’ve always hated staying on the lower floors. Celestial or otherwise.”

The physical labour of keeping him upright as they began to climb prevented her from dwelling on that last comment too much.

It was tough, with Chloe trying to hold his wing straight as they navigated the narrow stairs. In the confined space, it was apparent just how huge the things were, and despite his efforts to keep them tucked close, every jar of pain sent them spreading out, reflexively. The one time he'd stepped on her bare toes, the wet socks abandoned on the second floor,  he'd been so awkwardly apologetic she'd forgotten to be mad at him for making them go all this way. He’d complained that she didn’t have to be there; she’d replied with a threat to stay indefinitely if he didn’t shut up. It had worked too - he hadn’t known how to answer that.

By the time they’d reached the room he wanted, they’d lost the daylight completely, having exited the perpetual limbo of those stairs long after they’d entered. In the twilight streaming through the hallway curtains, the door looked the same as the rest. Glossy, white, and ordinary. Chloe hoped he had a good reason for dragging them all the way up here.

Lucifer pressed into her side, an arm wound around her shoulder. Whatever burst of energy he'd begun the climb with was long gone.

Three flights. Three flights of stairs. And with him in this condition.

Although it had only been just the one down.

She tried the door handle. Locked. Next to the door, she could just make out a bump in the wall, almost lost in the dim light.  Reaching out, she found the slot where a keycard would normally go. Ah.

She grabbed Lucifer’s hand, and waved it across the card reader. Nothing happened.

Lucifer roused just enough to be offended by that. “I’m not a bloody swipe card! Besides,” he paused for breath, “the mechanism is here.” He ran a finger down the side of the door, beside the handle - a languorous descent that was far too sensual for a length of painted wood. There was a click.

His hand fell back to his side, limp. Chloe shifted his weight over onto her back, freeing her own hand enough to push the door open.  

The room was huge.

And even in what was left of the evening that streamed through the wide, long windows, and through the exhaustion that stiffened her legs against Lucifer's near dead-weight, she saw its appeal. In the centre, shadows fell away from a gigantic mattress, the lumps of numerous pillows distorting its outline. It looked big enough for at least three people.

That was probably the point. It was Lucifer's suite after all.

In the doorway, Chloe wanted nothing more than to curl up and be swallowed by it - to shut the door and go to sleep.

That would have to wait a bit longer.

Lucifer let her nudge him towards it, using the last bit of his strength to shuffle forward towards the mattress and topple face-first into the soft expanse with a muffled whump.

Chloe sank down to sit on the edge, arranging a wing so it lay straight. Lucifer was quiet. He'd probably passed out.

She ran a hand lightly across the back of his smooth skull while she looked around the room. More details were emerging; there was the vague shape of a lounge in the corner, an armchair and coffee table arranged nearby. The large windows belonged to one of those balconies she'd seen from the pool.

Had that been today?

The other corner, away from those windows, was particularly dark.

As Chloe's eyes adjusted, the deepest part of those shadows revealed their secret.

She stood and crossed over to it, a little involuntary breath of laughter punctuating her discovery.

This was the real reason he'd brought them up all this way.

It was a fireplace.

Running her hands across its maw, she moved the heavy iron grill, tracing it downwards to where the roughness of wood formed a sizeable pile.

This would work. She could build this high enough to provide enough light to see what she was doing.  

She returned to Lucifer's side, shifting a few feathers to get to his pockets. She pulled out the dagger first, placing it beside the bed.

The curve of it was dangerously sharp, even in the dark.

The other pocket was disappointingly empty. Where did he keep it?

He wiggled against her hand in his back pocket, apparently conscious. The voice that drifted from the depths of the mattress had just a hint of amusement.

“As much as I love being groped, it's in the jacket. Left pocket.”

She still had it on, properly now. She'd completely forgotten.

In the left pocket was his lighter. She pulled it out and flicked it on, the wavering flame casting rippling shadows across the mass of feathers on the bed.

They fluttered slightly at the sound of the lighter striking, and he spoke again, the smugness no longer a hint. “Let there be light.”

The little flame was the size of the world for a moment, before Chloe returned from the brief metaphysical sojourn he'd inspired.

He was going to have to stop doing that without warning her first.

Building the fire was therapeutic. There was a packet of fire lighters, and the logs had been cut ready to be used. As the flames licked upwards, Chloe relaxed, letting the warmth do its thing. There were still wet patches from the pool on her shirt, where the vest had soaked up water, so she undressed carefully, and lay it all before the fire, wrapping herself in Lucifer's jacket.

She rose, looking at where he lay, those wings taking up the entire width of that huge mattress. They were faintly rising and falling; he'd finally given in and fallen asleep.

The jacket didn't cover much. If he was awake, he'd be loving this.

Using the flame from the lighter, she scouted out some supplies. A gigantic silk sheet, clearly custom made for that bed and perfect for what she was planning. Vodka from the cabinet on the opposite wall - of course the room had a full bar, Lucifer was not the type to be content with anything that began with ‘mini’.

She gathered every soft white hand towel the room contained; there was a surprising amount of them. She tried not to think why.

Finally, a large bowl, that had contained a mysterious collection of glass pebbles that were now tipped out in the bathroom sink. She'd filled the bowl with vodka, taking a swig herself first.

She'd never cleaned a bullet wound before. Laid out before her, she counted more than two dozen marring those wings.

This was nothing like when he'd been injured before. She'd shot him just the once, after all.

The little bullet necklace was at home, hanging off her dresser. She should have never taken it off. She should have told him what it had meant, when he'd given it to her.

Maybe he knew. After all, she'd kissed him. She'd kissed the Devil.

More than once.

She took another swig.

The light from the fire was uneven, but it was enough. As the blood came away from those wings, a tension eased in her that she hadn't been aware she was carrying. She cleaned each feather, parting them to dab at the wounds beneath. Some of them came loose, but that was okay. They'd grow back.

She hoped.

Lucifer didn't stir, though Chloe was sure the alcohol would have stung. The wings, as otherworldly as they'd first appeared, were definitely flesh, and as she used the dagger to gently leverage out part of a bullet, behaved just like any other limb. The bones moved like an elongated arm, and the muscle and skin beneath those feathers was as soft and supple as her own.

It wasn't red. The mystery of his burnt, scarred face did not extend to his wings. Whatever made him like that, the wings were not part of it.

Whatever she'd expected, back when she'd been determined to unravel Lucifer's past and reveal his secrets, it was certainly not being faced with even more questions.

She figured he'd have plenty of time to answer once he woke up; he definitely wasn’t going anywhere.

The fire had to be built up again by the time she was ready to move on. The slash on his sleeve was crusted to his arm; that would need dressing.

She widened the slash on his shirt and dabbed at the wound with one of the white towels. With the firelight dancing over his skin, it was impossible to tell where the red flesh ended and the cut began.

It could be looked at later. She cut the sleeve away entirely, and bound it around his upper arm.

She was doing this. One by one, as she dressed his wounds, she was putting herself back together.

It gave her enough strength to try dealing with the broken bone she'd so far done nothing more to than clean.

It wasn't bleeding. The break had swollen, and she suspected the bone was fragmented along the top of the wing.

The pleasant buzz of the vodka made it much easier. The bottle was gone now - had she finished it? She grabbed another.

Slicing a few long strips off the sheet had been a smart move - wrapping them around the wing, they were enough to hold it in place while she got the rest of the sheet around him. Like a sling. She'd done this for Trixie when she'd broken her arm.

Totally the same thing.

She was well into the second bottle of vodka by the time she collapsed on the bed, in the space recently vacated by the broken wing. It sat against his back now, tucked neatly into the wrapped sheet. She'd pulled the soft silk around his chest, making sure the knots were out of the way so he wasn't lying on them.

It was not bad at all.

The fire popped, having burnt low. The moonlight had come and gone, the return of the dark as comfortable as the luxurious depths of the mattress.

She'd pulled him over onto his side while binding that wing, and he lay there now, just catching the edge of the firelight. In the gently spinning blur of that vodka, she wondered what hell was like.   

Those scars were from more than fire. She traced along one that ran down the side of his head, interrupting his ear, and continuing down his neck. Whatever had made him like this, it was cruel. The cuts and broken wings she could attempt to dress; but whatever had ravaged the rest of him was beyond her.

There was another creak, and Chloe's hand froze. That hadn't been the fire.

It had come from the door behind her, still ajar.

Soft footsteps crept close to the bed, treading lightly on the plush carpet.

Whoever was here this late couldn't be friendly. They'd probably seen the glow of the fire and broken in. It had been stupid not to close the curtains.

Chloe wished she'd left the dagger on the other side of the bed.

The footsteps stilled, and the sensation of being watched was an uncomfortable crawl across her back.

Very carefully she turned over, holding in a whimper at the looming figure that stood a short distance away.

Lucifer's face. His real face. The one he'd worn before.

The features were exact, down to the unruly curls she knew Lucifer secretly tamed every day. The suit was familiar too; perfectly cut, and worn with the unconscious arrogance of someone who knew they were right. It wasn’t one she’d seen Lucifer wear, but it was certainly in his wheelhouse.

But this wasn't Lucifer. The figure stood stiffly, with none of the music that moved her partner. There was no delight beneath the hard line of that mouth; none of the dancing passion that drew it into beautiful shapes - though the man's eyes were just as fierce.

This man was dangerous. It was a strong, instinctive fear, and it pressed Chloe back against Lucifer, the alcohol in her making every movement slow and clumsy.

He glossed past Chloe; apparently she wasn't that interesting in her near-nakedness.

The man's gaze rested on Lucifer, taking in the length of his damaged wings.

The voice that rolled out from him was smoothed by eons, but it tossed her far into that river, far beyond the sight of shore.

She knew who this was. The words were confirmation enough.  

“Brother,” he spoke, the sadness too wide and deep for Chloe to swim against, “what have you done to yourself?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All that, and not one mention of "smouldering eyes"...


	8. FRATERNAL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which drunk Chloe is helpless against the might of the extended metaphor…

_Michael._

The name was a meeting of two worlds; the threads of Lucifer's past slipping through Chloe’s fingers, and tangling together in an impossible knot. It came to her despite a deep, subconscious plea for it to stay quiet in the safety of memory.

But as she lay there, watching the man who wore Lucifer's face step closer, the memory would not retreat. In the unresolved shadows cast by that flickering firelight, she was helpless.

He was Lucifer's brother. A twin.

That was part of this truth. The easier part.

The rest of it was a yawning gulf of things that refused to remain as myth.

Of angels. Of angels who hurt other angels.

Cushioned by the vodka, she drifted through that gulf, the enormity of it below a sucking wind.

This was the brother she hadn't met; the name Lucifer had mentioned once, and never again. She heard it clearly now, the tremble in her partner's voice resonating in her head, though it was spawned from a single memory.

_Michael._

She'd never forgotten.

This was the brother that had hurt her partner.

She fell into the memory, the descent into that gulf a welcome retreat from the space she shared with this new revelation, with _Michael_.

Each wall of that wide chasm was one half of Lucifer's truth. The near-side, the one she'd been standing on, was made of the disturbing upbringing he'd described. It was a dysfunctional family; misplaced blame; unprocessed childhood trauma.

It was a passionate, driven man who had fled a terrible past. It was an unloved son, scorned by a distant father. Brothers who had forgotten how to be brothers. A mother who seemed to just… forget. Who had done nothing when her son was kicked out of home.

It was lifelong therapy.

That side was all too familiar in the landscape of broken families that was Hollywood.

The other side was in the distance, a shifting, crumbling mess. That side hurt to look at, the facets of it indistinct, the edges all wrong. Over there were angels, and God, and flood and fire and pestilence.

On that side, God played dice and rolled endless pairs of ones.

On that side, one of those dice-rolls had claimed her father.

That wall descended past clouds of virtue and light. Past pits of demons and torment. Past the lost souls of the dead that _did have souls_ and _were never lost._

Past a pair of broken, bloodied wings.

On that side, there had been a war. A lake of fire. Punishment.

And on that side, the world's eternal guilt had been laid at the feet of a single, burning figure.

That side belonged to the Devil, who had been cast out of Heaven.

There was no spanning that gulf, no bridge across. The two sides were irreconcilable, two worlds, two realities. One offended the other. The Devil could not be in therapy. Her partner was not the root of all sin.  

And yet those walls met at the bottom.

It had been during a harrowing case that had concluded with one young brother killing another. Chloe and Lucifer had arrived too late; the two boys fought, one had died. Chloe had kept it distant, just another tragedy.

But it had affected Lucifer in a way no other case had before - or after.

She’d caught him standing over the crumpled form of the dead teenager, the arrogant insouciance he’d earlier thrown at the case drained away and replaced with a haunted look she was sure she wasn’t supposed to see.

The surviving brother had shown no remorse, but Lucifer, apparently, had plenty to go around.

Later, back at the precinct, she’d finally been brave enough to ask why it mattered so much. He hadn't been right since her car crash, and she'd meant it when she'd offered to listen. He replied with a question instead.

A heavy question. Whether she believed there was ever a reason for one brother to kill another.

The way he asked had the echo of a key turning in a lock. It had come from the core of him, and as much as she wanted to truly understand, and to have him finally tell her the truth - she shied away from pushing further.

She wasn't ready to see him stripped that bare. And that little voice she’d ignored for so long, that asked why solving murders held so much fascination for someone so ephemeral? She silenced it with the words she thought he needed.  

Murder was never justified. No matter what reason anyone gave, there was always a better choice than ending a life.

That was the simple answer, so it was the one she gave. Lucifer nodded, as if her vague platitudes were the confirmation he craved. Briefly, she believed she’d been comforting.

But more came, pouring out of him, a frantic unwinding, and she was helpless to stop it.

_There should have been another way. Michael would have found it. Another choice. A better choice._

He wasn't making sense. Whatever the case had triggered, it was dark. Too dark. She had no idea what to say, sure she was just going to make things worse. She should have changed the subject. Left. Done anything but ask who Michael was.

But she had, fatally curious. So he told her.

_My brother. My twin._

Lucifer paused there, for a long time, looking across the precinct, lost somewhere between memories. Chloe stayed quiet, holding in her shock - sensing there was more. Finally _,_ so quietly it was barely more than a bit of breath leaving his lips, he added one last qualifier.

_My punisher._

He snapped his eyes back to hers, alight. Feverish.

 _Uriel deserved punishment, but not that_. _Not_ that _._

Too late, Chloe realised they weren’t talking about the case. This was something deeper. Something awful. She wanted to undo the asking, to stop pulling the thread before it unraveled everything, but Lucifer barely registered her presence, too far gone to be steered somewhere safer.

 _Michael wouldn't have killed him. He would have found a way. He would have let him live, so he could suffer._ _Like he did to me._

And Lucifer turned away, with those shadow-brown eyes carved up with pain, and she knew for sure that her answer had not been enough. No answer would ever be enough.

Because that sounded like torture, and it sounded like it had been done to her partner. By his brother.

In that moment, the fog that obscured Lucifer’s past had thinned, and what she’d glimpsed within had been heartbreaking. He'd lost a brother. One that had been killed. And Lucifer had been made to suffer. A punishment so severe that living through it was the harsher option. How did any of that fit together? She should have pushed for more, to pull out enough to arrest this Michael, to make him answer. Instead she had finally changed the subject, and her partner had slipped his mask back on. They’d never discussed it. But that brief hint at the true trauma of his childhood had turned the name he’d given her into something demonic, the spectre of Lucifer's suffering at the hand of his twin having entered her nightmares.

_Like he did to me._

And here he was.

It was him. There was no doubt. Michael. Lucifer’s brother. _That_ brother.

The twin.

The archangel.

His presence filled the room, and as he stepped around the bed, closer to Lucifer, it was a crushing weight on Chloe’s chest, pinning her down. The shadows that had settled around the soft glow of the fire now seemed sharp-edged, jumping and shifting around the intruder’s slow stalk.

There was a screaming wrongness here, that this figure should exist. That this name, that she had carried silently for so long, should belong to flesh and blood. To a living, breathing brother, that could part the darkness like a knife, and bring to life all of the menace that name had held, from the one time Lucifer had spoken of him.  

She lay there, rigid, following Michael’s progress with her eyes only. It was what he willed, for her to be still. It was in that cold, bright stare, and in the angular way he held himself - she was to obey.

So she did not move.

And he was bending down, running a hand along the edge of the wing she’d bandaged. Stroking each feather, removing one of the black ones, and casting it aside with distaste. Chloe knew the places where those bullets had pushed into the flesh beneath, and watched as Michael lingered over a spot towards the wing’s tip, where the wound almost went clean through to the other side.

“How could you?” He sat on the edge of the bed, gently realigning the long flight feathers to make room. “They were the last good thing left of you. And I was sure I would be the only one to ever break them.” He spoke with the same precise Britishness as Lucifer, yet where her partner used the accent as leverage, giving each thing he uttered a spark of life of its own, this brother used it like a hammer, flattening each vowel into submission. Chloe could see him leaning forward, looking closely at the bandaged cut on Lucifer's arm.

Then he looked at her, and Chloe stopped breathing.

But she was trivial, a curiosity that lay on the bed like a favorite doll, existing only in the brief moment he acknowledged her.  He returned his attention to the wing, moving his hand through it with practised ease. “Still beautiful, even like this. Even attached to that.” He removed another darkened feather, and stroked it against the bare, red flesh of Lucifer's arm. “You always were a contradiction.” The tip of the feather crumbled, and Michael pulled the rest of it apart, clear dismay on his face as it was reduced to powder between his fingers.

The vodka she’d downed earlier was in full effect now, leaving her a numb pile of limbs with a helpless, pounding heart trapped within.

“Brother?” He was shaking Lucifer now, the motion jolting Chloe where she lay. “Why aren't you healing? Get up.” The concern in his voice had to be a lie.

That voice was ice and steel, each syllable clipped into grim procedure.

That voice had come to pass judgement.

“Michael?” The confused halt to the name was weak, but it was far more familiar, even half-mumbled through a pillow.

Lucifer. He was awake.

Chloe could feel him stirring next to her, the tips of feathers brushing along her bare legs. His eyes opened slowly, blinking as they registered her form lying close by. Their brightness was a focal point, and she used it to pull herself back, out of that gulf. The Devil was on her side. That had to count for something.

“Lucifer?” There was a light in Michael’s voice, at last. His hand was back on the edge of Lucifer’s wing, resting there as if in ownership. He looked down at his brother, the flicker of a smile on his face momentarily banishing its harsh edges. “It’s been so long. Amenadiel said you were… different. But I didn’t realise.”

There was a huff of laughter from Lucifer at that. He turned his head slowly, on the pillow, to look his brother in the eye. “No. You didn’t. And no, I’m not.” The words were barely there, dragged out of somewhere deep and far away, but those eyes were alight, saying far more. A pure, hard red; anger. Accusation. “Good to know our brother’s returned to the fold,” he said, grin mixed with snarl.

“After you corrupted him,” Michael replied. The light was gone, his voice stern once more.  Another line of feathers was smoothed in the short, tense silence that followed.

Lucifer broke it, twisting onto his front and pulling the wing out from under Michael’s hand. “He corrupted himself.” Chloe could see him panting with the effort it took to push himself up, and twist to face Michael. “And if I’d gone along with what he wanted you’d be fighting a war right now.”

A war. There was far too much here that Chloe didn’t know, and the facts swam together into coalescing swirls of reason, little bits and pieces trying to assert themselves and failing against the drifting haze of that vodka. It helped, somewhat - there was a strange acceptance in the soft disassociation of her drunkenness, that simply let the myth blend into fact without any overt concern for the barrier of reason that had once stood between. That what she knew of Lucifer’s past, and what she knew from - _elsewhere_ \- were one and the same.

It was too much to follow, but she tried, focussing on the dread slowness of Michael’s voice as he answered Lucifer’s retort with pure ice. “We saw. We saw you banish our mother, where none of us will ever see her again. We watched it all. How you delighted in killing Cain. And in killing…” Michael looked away. “And in the rest of it.” There was a strange stumble in Michael’s voice as he said that last part that was echoed by a sharp, broken exhalation from Lucifer, back hunching against his brother's words. The room was blanketed by the weight of silence, those twin bright points lost as Lucifer screwed his eyes shut.  

“Did you think nobody was watching?” Michael continued on, pushing past whatever it was that had turned his earlier, simple phrase into a verbal dagger, sending a second stab Lucifer's way.

Lucifer sank down even further, leaning away from his brother. “Why would any of you watch?” he whispered. The downy feathers just below the nape of his neck puffed up, a spray of white still prevailing near his spine.  “I thought you’d long tired of my usual entertaining presence.” His voice grew darker. “Or was it to watch me suffer? Did you all get popcorn out for _Lucifer’s Fall_ \- the sequel.” He picked at the knot tying the sheet around his broken wing, moving it downwards. “Is that why you came here finally, in person? To see it up close?”

“No, we-” Michael tried to answer, but Lucifer wasn’t listening. The arm that propped him up on the sheets was shaking.

“Then why? Why come down here if you’re just going to prattle on about things you know nothing about. Why come here, after so long, if not to gloat over the fact that I’m once again the way _you_ made me.” He leaned into Michael’s space, the glow from the fire catching the finer details of his scarred, red face. “Look! Burnt, broken. Just as Dad intended.” He made the words sharp and cruel, though the hand behind him dug into the sheets, its trembling hidden from his brother.

Her partner was scared, Chloe realised. He talked when he was scared, piling the words up against whatever was ahead. All those times he'd faced danger with a cocky, lengthy diatribe on his target’s sins - it had always been a front. Yet another facet of his she'd misread.  And now, here, he wouldn't shut up.

Michael flinched. “Father never-”

“Or...” Lucifer’s eyes widened, the spark of a new idea glittering in their depths, “...did you come to finish it off? Are you finally-”

He’d gone too far.

“Lucifer, _enough._ ” Michael cut him off with a roar, the intensity of it derailing Lucifer completely. “I don’t want to fight you.” In a quieter voice, he continued, “It shouldn’t go like this. Please, brother. Don’t let it go like this.”  

There was an edge of desperation in that plea, but it sounded rusty in Michael’s mouth, like he’d practised it a thousand times, but never once acted it out.

Still, Lucifer had heard. He sat motionless, watching his brother carefully. Michael didn’t move either, the distance between them like a taut string that would snap the moment one of them pulled or pushed.

There was little Chloe could do in the face of that - Michael’s shout had flattened her into the sheet, the tidal wave of his celestial frustration still crashing over her.

She shifted by Lucifer’s side, pressing closer. He noticed her, the movement drawing his attention away from Michael. Those eyes paled into a fire tinged with gold, the softening of his expression a reassuring sight. Chloe felt his rough hand brush up against hers, seeking it out. She closed her fingers around it, tight. Safe.

Lucifer's soft exhalation was accompanied by the slump of his shoulders. “Alright,” he said, letting his gaze drift down, over to the glowing fire. “What is it then?” Her partner ground the words out, resigned.

The tilt of Michael’s head was too close to the one Lucifer gave when confused. “What is what?”

“My punishment. Why else are you here? Why else were you all watching? Clearly the jury reached a verdict.”

“Lucifer, that’s-”

“Just tell me.” He looked up again, waiting. “What is my punishment?”

The earnest question hit Michael full force in a place he hadn’t been expecting a blow. All of his frustration fell away, to leave behind that deep, aching sadness, that dragged down the harsh lines of him until they too fell away, leaving nothing but a lost brother.

“Isn’t it obvious?” He reached out to rest a hand on the side of his brother’s face, tilting it up towards him. Every inch of those scars were mapped under his intense scrutiny, his thumb rubbing gently over his brother's cheek. “Oh Lucifer. You’re wearing it.”

Lucifer pulled away from the touch like he'd been burnt.

“ _No_ ,” he whispered, hoarse, struggling to move backwards, towards the wall. Away from Michael. “ _Please_.”

Michael let him go, standing up abruptly to face the fire. There'd been a flash of something in his eyes as he'd turned, the hint of something silver.

With his back still turned, he held up one of those black feathers, knowing Lucifer was watching. “And how long before this consumes the rest of you?” It was longer than the others. A flight feather.

There was a choked sob from Lucifer. “Don't leave me like this. _Please_.”

“You are poison. And it's spreading.” Michael let the feather drop, and it drifted to the floor in ever tightening spirals.

Chloe felt the moment Lucifer gave up, his hand slipping away from hers. He slumped back onto his side, facing away from her. She wanted to tell him to not listen, to ignore the person that spoke about him like he was too far gone to be saved.

Like the tormented, red carnage of this face was the true Lucifer.

But she couldn't speak. Her body was a distantly occupied space, and for all the sharp injustice she felt at Michael's words, the loss of contact with Lucifer's hand had also broken the tenuous control she'd had over her fear.

She pleaded with him silently, to rally. To believe he deserved to be saved. To not let his brother break him even further.

Lucifer remained silent, covering his head with both arms. He was coiled tight, knees tucked in close, the mess of feathers on his back bunched as tight as they would go, damaged as they were.

Michael turned back to the bed, assessing his brother’s state. “Lucifer? What is wrong with you? You've suffered far worse than this.” But Lucifer didn't answer.

The severe line of Michael’s eyebrows creased. This was clearly not what he had expected.

“Well. I suppose if you were mine to break, you must also be mine to mend. Right then.” The roll of his shoulders was familiar, but Chloe had too little time to make the connection before the space behind Michael was enveloped in two huge, silvery wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was written piece by bloody piece. It struggled to be free, and finally, painfully, clawed itself into the light. 
> 
> I need to give a huge thank you to everyone that has commented on these chapters - like season 4, they exist entirely because of you. Whenever I get to a section that requires some serious effort to get right, I go back and read them and I swear the quality of my writing improves. So thank you, deeply. 
> 
> If any of you are so inclined, join me on Twitter at @apparitionfic


	9. FURY

They outshone the firelight.

They outshone the firelight the way the moon outshines a candle.

In the dark room, every glowing inch of them was revealed. The sweeping arches, the long, gradual fall of the flight feathers, the little overlapping discs that lay smooth along their leading edge. Chloe drank them in, the shape of every vane worth a thousand years of study.  

_Glory._

The soft rustle of their unfolding gave away their delicacy - they did not, in fact, have the clink of knives, or the scrape of metal, though they gleamed like they could cut the air in half. Still, the glinting edges of each feather shifted like steel, as sharp a promise as one of Lucifer's deals.

Like a polished mirror, the feathers drew every flicker of light inwards, bending and reshaping it into beautiful incandescence. The soft, silver glow spilled over onto Michael’s dark suit, illuminating its edges, and gave him the appearance of a living shadow wreathed by sculpted moonlight.

_Glory._

At some point, she’d shrank back against the bedhead, pressed tight to the velvet cover. The pillow was slowly being crushed by her fisted hands, the spike of its goose-down filling offering little resistance. Whatever gentle numbness that vodka had provided was gone, stripped away into primal, brutal clarity. There was no looking away.

This was the other side of that gulf.

This was the side of angels.

She was nothing here, _nothing_. A speck of falling dust caught in the eddies of that vast open space, too small to hold on, too dim to be seen against the sear of that silver.

And she was sinking, falling.  

Pulled _down_ , back to where she’d clawed desperately at the air, and then at the water, trying to reach anything that would offer purchase. Sinking, deep, nothing below but a distant chill that was hardening to ice. Drowning, in that smothering, choking water where the boundaries of the world were endless and there was no _up_.

Michael shifted in slow motion, each minute action stretched into eternities. With one wing gracefully extended forward, his outermost feathers stretched out to lightly brush the opposite wall. Their impossible, ethereal glow bounced off against the prim white paint, leaving glancing patterns that danced and wove along its surface, reflections of reflections, infinitely intricate.

These were nothing like Lucifer's wings. Even before that strange, spreading rot had dimmed what was left of their stark white brightness, his had never had the raw, aching glory of the ones before her now. Lucifer’s wings were flesh and blood. As strange as it was to think of them as such, they were merely feathers.

They’d carried her through the air though, strong and powerful right up until that fatal moment he’d lost control. That steady beat was there, in her memory, eating up lengths of the sky.

She’d been safe, just for that moment, before they fell.

Safe.

Chloe blinked. Lucifer’s presence next to her was too quiet, the lack of response to Michael’s ominous last words triggering an alarm that sounded up from the depths of her fear. She could feel the heat of him, close by, but he hadn’t moved. Hadn’t reacted at all. At the limits of her peripheral vision, he still lay curled in on himself, one ruined wing drawn up over his shoulder to hide his face.

His face, which was apparently some kind of divine punishment. For what had happened back at the loft? For dealing with … _Cain_?

Out of all of the puzzle pieces she’d been given, the strange, jagged enormity of that one matched with nothing. Pierce, the Lieutenant - or whoever he truly had been - was a murderer. He’d killed Charlotte. He’d tried to kill them both. Lucifer had stopped him.

It wasn’t his fault. Her partner wasn’t a killer. He’d been defending them both.

He’d gone back, though. To finish it.

And that dagger had carved through bone.

Chloe blinked again, and the wash of silver fog that hovered at the margins of her mind closed in a little tighter. It was so hard to hold on, to keep those feather-borne tendrils at bay. They wanted silence. They wanted the simple acquiescence of fear, the paralysis of doubt.

But Lucifer was not a killer.

He was not.

Her certainty was a crack in the ice, just enough thawing of that paralysing fear to look away from those feathers and register the determined look on Michael’s face. It spoke volumes. Whatever he was about to do, he believed it was necessary. And right.

Those were the most dangerous people of all.

And here they both were, at his mercy. She couldn’t move, and Lucifer had given up.

There was nothing she could do but watch.

The soft, frustrated cry that pushed up past her throat sounded far too loud in Chloe's ears, but Michael continued to ignore her, focussed on the spread feathers of one of his wings. He carefully drew out a short shaft from the underside, a cut-off hiss punctuating its removal as his lips drew back in pain. The silver feathers ruffled, then settled back into place, scintillating.

They were so beautiful. Dazzling. Searing. Blinding.

They were the size and shape of everything. And something more, something _beyond_.

These wings were-

Abruptly, they were gone, tucked away by that familiar shoulder roll into an impossible nothing. Chloe shivered, suddenly freezing cold despite the heat that leaked from the fireplace.

The flickering darkness was the return of that abyss, but for the one, glowing feather suspended at the centre of the world - of the room, by Michael’s hand.

Very deliberately, he pressed it to the top of Lucifer’s broken wing, where it emerged from the sheet she’d wrapped around it. The flash of white as it made contact was like watching the afterimage of a lightning bolt. It was the colour of the sky being torn apart.

And Lucifer’s screams were the thunder.

With his back arched, Lucifer writhed, the long, ragged cries that were ripped out of him trailing off in desolate exhaustion. It hurt to look, to listen, the light lancing into Chloe’s head, but she forced her eyes open, seeking him out.

Michael had caught his brother as he rolled forward on the bed, Lucifer’s head thrashing back and forth as his eyes melted through hues of red and orange. They burned right through her, too lost in pain to register her presence.

He was in agony. The next crack in the ice cleaved through her chest, right through the centre of her, where the fear had locked tight. There was salt on her lips now. Tracks of tears, hot against her numb cheek, the melted runoff of that fear.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. She’d lost her mind, all of it was a nightmare. Or she’d truly died, falling from the sky, and this was a first hand glimpse of her partner’s domain.

Anything but this.

Her fingers twitched, pressed deep into the pillow.

Kneeling close to hover over Lucifer's wing, Michael concentrated hard as he kept a steady hand immersed in that terrible brightness. He lifted his other hand to stroke the cracks and rents of Lucifer’s scalp, cradling the back of his brother’s head.

“Shhh, brother,” he crooned. “It will be ok. Let it do its work.”

Lucifer wasn’t listening.

“Stop! _Stop_. _Please.”_ He was repeating it over and over, the words slipping into incoherent rambling. A wild, scarred hand reached for the edge of the bed, trying to pull away, but lost its grip as the pain intensified. The white light continued, unrelenting, while the air became acrid, the sharp tang of something on fire.

There was another noise, almost lost in the background of that pain, something small and desperate. _Lucifer,_ it called, again and again. _No, no, no_ , it went on, inside Chloe’s head. It was a tiny voice, but it wanted to be free. It railed against the fear, against that ice.

 _Fight back,_ it said, although whether that wisdom was for her or Lucifer was lost in the rush of clarity it brought.

That was her voice.

She whispered his name again, louder, and this time Lucifer turned to face her, while Michael held him by the wing. His eyes locked with hers, a flare of recognition briefly there, before they became frighteningly dark.

He was fading. Lucifer was fading. Michael didn’t even seem to notice, apparently content that he was no longer struggling.

Her hand flattened out again, over the pillow, as she forced her fingers straight. That was _up._ Lucifer was _up_. And he needed her.

The room became solidly real, once more. Sulphur. Was that coming from the fireplace? The air reeked of it, the sting as she breathed it in enough to banish the too-large memory of those silver wings.

That visceral, compelling dread of Michael - of the name alone - had climbed to stratospheric heights after witnessing his wings, but now a new emotion began to take precedence, curling that hand into a fist.

Torture. Michael was torturing her partner.

Something shattered inside her, sharp and awful, a deeper level of instinct pushing upwards, until it broke the surface.

_No._

She had to do something. That smell wasn't from the fireplace.

It was the smell of Lucifer's feathers, burning into ash.

Lucifer’s next scream was a voiceless rasp, tipping his head back against Michael's hand, only to be met with softly murmured promises it would be over soon.

It needed to be over _now._

Chloe launched herself across the bed, channeling that pure, desperate fear into something new.

Into anger.

Into a leap, instead of a fall.

Her collision with Michael was mostly successful; she’d sprung far enough to clear Lucifer entirely, and as she locked her fingers hard onto Michael’s shoulders, the impetus of her leap dragged him backwards, away from the bed. Away from Lucifer. Her wild yell was less than intentional, but it gave the fear less bite.

There was a thump as Michael’s back hit the floor, Chloe falling forward onto his chest. He absorbed her weight with a quiet grunt, while she clung to those shoulders. She still wore Lucifer's jacket, a thin boundary over her chest, but lined up against Michael so close she could feel the fast thud of his heart beating, it was meagre protection. Her legs were elsewhere, sprawled somewhere unimportant and confusing, the sudden fall backwards a nauseating relocation.

Behind her, the bed was quiet. Whatever Michael had been doing to her partner, she hoped she’d stopped it in time.  

She lifted her head, fighting against a wave of dizziness. That white light was gone, though the shape of it persisted at the back of her eyelids. Still, the embers in the fireplace were enough to light up Michael’s face, inches from her own. It had gone slack with surprise at the moment of impact, but now hardened into something tight, and twisted. A low growl rumbled out of the chest beneath her.

Those eyes were fixed on her, properly now.

“Human. Get. _Off._ Me.” There was a second where that smooth, inexorable voice was close in her ear, and it was that same second that she was moving, fast, through the air and then slammed hard into the unyielding dark.

Pain. Bright, dark pain. Chloe crumpled into the base of the wall, letting the floor reassert itself. She lay half across the plush white rug in front of the fire, her face pressed into its thick fibres. The breath had been compressed out of her, the switch in her brain that had prompted that leap firmly back to the off position.

For a stretch of time it was easier to simply lie there and listen to the buzz in her head, while the swimming blackness rose up around her. It hurt - a throbbing heat at the back of her ribs, and at that place on her chest that had withstood a bullet. The breath she took was too shallow, but she dragged it into her lungs, greedy.

She'd attacked an archangel. He'd flung her across the room like an insect.

That pain meant she was probably still alive. It was a nagging counterpart to the hollow vastness left where those silver wings had filled her mind. Gradually, it pulled her away from the lip of terror she hovered near, contemplating what she'd done. It made sense to fear Michael, yet that unnatural, crushing weight that had kept her frozen was gone.

She took another breath, holding it against the pain in her ribs, and letting it out gently. The rug was tickling her nose, but she was too dizzy to move.

What was the punishment for attacking an archangel? Whatever it was, she'd pay it gladly, to keep Michael away. Even if it cost her a few broken ribs. Or worse.

The heat of the fire was soothing. It would be easy to sink into the luxury of that rug. To sink into the dark. To simply focus on cataloguing the places she was bruised, or worrying about why it hurt to breathe.

But none of that mattered.

There was fury in the room with her. The snarl of something uncaged, something with teeth.

It was the Devil.

He was alive.

As the throbbing buzz faded in her ears, that fury rose to replace it.

“...you done to her? _What have you done!_ ” The hoarse cry was met with sounds of protest, sounds of warning, that were drowned out by crackling rage.

A loud bang; the sound of something, or _someone_ , being thrown against the heavy base of that huge bed. Thuds across the floor; someone crawling. A snarled, pained roar.

“Lucifer, she's-”

A sharp, solid smack; a boulder striking a mountain. A grunt. A throaty, chaotic yell. Wood splintering. The smash of something going to pieces.

Her name, called out from the dark, howling. A demand to be let go, the fierce indignation of it unmistakably Lucifer’s. He was alright. That was good. That was all that mattered.

She had to see. Chloe forced her eyes open, blinking at the surface in front of her. The memory of Michael’s feathers stretched out against that neat, white paint replayed itself, momentarily turning the wall into a mire of patterned silver, pulling her back down again. She reached out, separating it from the floor. It was just a wall. Her hand trembled as she stretched it up along the cool, smooth expanse, but the firm pressure was steadying.

Behind her, the sound of a body hitting the floor hard; a dull thump against the carpet. Another sharp impact; the distinctive violence of flesh meeting fist. Another. And another.

She slid herself up against the wall, letting her head rest back against it. It took a minute to focus, and to separate the mess of red skin and dark feathers from the figure it was attacking.

Lucifer had Michael pinned beneath him with his knees, one hand tight on his shirt collar, fist poised to strike another blow. Exhaustion dripped from every inch of him, the tight quiver of his muscles a clear giveaway he couldn’t keep this up for long. His wings hung low from his back, her sheet still binding the broken one securely, though it bore a strange black scorch mark at one end of the fabric.

A thin line of red marched along the splayed tips of his feathers where they dragged along the carpet, winking in and out of brightness, smouldering.

They were, very slightly, on fire.

Chloe fixated on the slow, steady creep of dancing, flickering wrath. Though it was mostly spent, merely pinprick remnants of Michael's torture, trails of black smoke still wicked backwards from the blackened tips.

What had Michael done? What had he _done?_ Her fear of him was nothing against the black pit of anger that now lifted her chin, and straightened her back against that wall. She packaged all of the pain neatly aside, to be experienced later, when Lucifer was safe.

She was barely dressed, exhausted, hardly sober and very, very, human - but Michael was going to answer for what he'd done to her partner. She'd tear every last one of those silver feathers out of him if she had to.

Even if doing so broke her mind.

As she struggled to sit up, Lucifer turned to look at her in surprise, the fist falling. He showed no sign of awareness of the state of his wings, breathing heavily as he frantically checked her over. Scattered behind Lucifer lay the remnants of one of the wooden bedside stands, a casualty of their earlier struggle. Bits of white porcelain lay glinting against the carpet, mixed in amongst the broken pieces of wood. One of the hotel lamps. It was surprising that was all they’d destroyed.

Michael spoke first, calmly, from his position below Lucifer. “I told you. She's alright. I'm careful. Unlike _you._ ”

Lucifer lunged upwards, in her direction, but Michael grabbed the loose tail of his shirt, pulling him back down. “You and I need to talk. She can wait. This goes beyond the concern of humans.”

“Let me go,” growled Lucifer, straining against his brother’s grip.

“Since when are you so concerned? Last time we spoke you resented their entire existence. You were so sure we should have been enough for Father.” Michael sounded genuinely confused.

“My resentment was for _Dad_ , not for them. And you treat them like _ants_.” Lucifer’s anger was a tight hiss.

“Do I? Well, heads up brother, that one bites.” There was something new in Michael's expression as he turned to look back at her across the floor. His left cheek was split open, a long rent below his eye that was satisfyingly bloody, yet it was the sharpness in his observation of her that truly transformed him.

He was studying her like she was important.

That was terrifying.

“ _Chloe_ ,” Lucifer was staring at her too, although she was far more used to the intensity he directed at her. “Are you... alright?” She gave a tiny nod, trying to ignore the way his red face fractured into blurred duplicates, her vision refusing to snap back into focus.

His relief was obvious, the tension that held his back straight finally giving way. Michael caught it too, looking back up at his brother, curious. Lucifer’s eyes had that fleck of yellow darting through their depths as he continued, urgently, “Get out of here, Chloe. If you can walk, get... away from… him.”

She was beginning to recognise the stiffness in Lucifer’s movements, the forced slowness in the inflection of each word, though the breathy hitch on her name betrayed him. He was not alright, although he was doing an excellent job of hiding it.

Probably because he’d had so much practise in the past.

There was no way she was leaving Lucifer alone with his brother. With his _punisher._ Besides, her legs were unlikely to cooperate, still on holiday from that vodka. They were still there, connected to her body, but they certainly weren’t responding to orders just yet.

If only she had her gun. Or anything, really. Lucifer bled, so why not his brother?

“I didn’t come here to hurt her. Or you.” Michael pulled Lucifer’s arm down, to get a look at his unbound wing. He caught a glimpse of the scorched ends of the feathers at Lucifer's back, and raised his head in sudden horror.

“… they're not healing. Why aren't they… ” He took hold of Lucifer’s bare arm, his fingers tight around the red skin, and pulled him forward to get a better look. The red smoulder had thankfully died out, but the smell of sulphur was still thick in the air.  “Why didn't it work?” he whispered, to himself.

“What?” Lucifer turned back to him, incredulous. “You know why.”

“I was trying to heal you. The way we've always done. It was _my_ feather. It should have worked.” Michael paused. “Why didn't it _work_?” he repeated, addressing Lucifer, his voice slightly cracking.

“Oh come on. Don’t pretend. You know what those bloody feathers do.” Lucifer spoke as if addressing a child. “They don't heal, they _restore_.”

Michael nodded. “So they should restore your wings. Bring you back to what you were. Whole.”

That drew another of those half-mad cackles from her partner. “No, brother dear. Wrong.” With an overly casual flick, he pulled his left wing forward, and grabbed at the blackened feather tips. They crumbled in his hand, gone to ash. He sprinkled the fine black powder over Michael's chest, a mirthless smile full of teeth shaping his words. “They only restore things to their true nature. And we know what mine is. You said it yourself. _Poison_.”

Michael was staring at the falling ash in disbelief. “But you’re an...  angel. Whatever else you are, you’re still an angel.”

“No, I am _not_ ,” Lucifer snarled.

“Oh come on. You know that’s why they always came back before, despite your… self-flagellation. And you were certainly doing a decent angel impression when you were carrying her through the sky. We all felt it, you know. It’s why I came. You were radiating-”

“ _Shut up._ ” Lucifer ended that sentence with another punch, though this one was significantly weaker. It was satisfying to see him hold his own, but Chloe had wanted to hear the end of that. He was _radiating_? Radiating what?

Lucifer pointed at the red leather of his cheek. “ _This_ is what I am, you silvery idiot. Speaking of which, shouldn't you be running the Silver City?”

“Shouldn't you be running Hell?” Michael's retort was fast and vicious. He let go of Lucifer's arm to brush the ash off his chest, clear disgust on his face.

Lucifer took advantage of his brother’s distraction to risk a glance at Chloe. He flicked his eyes urgently to the right, to a space beyond that enormous bed. To the door. He was trying to tell her to go. It was still ajar, and she could just make out the rest of the room’s furniture, over in that direction.

The dagger. The dagger was still on the stand next to the bed.

Michael spoke up again from below, that arrogance returning in full force. “Quite amusing watching the things you do for this one. How many trips to Hell has it been now? For someone who said he'd never go back. Shame we could never control you like that.”  

Chloe tried to block his voice out. It was impossible to follow what they were saying, and she needed to focus on keeping the floor from spinning beneath her. She pitched herself forward onto her elbows, and began to crawl forwards.

Lucifer's gaze slid over to catch her movement, and once again measure her distance to the door. She met his eyes, and was rewarded with a small, sad smile. “It was worth it,” he answered softly. “To keep her safe.”

She heard the note of relief in that, and would have rolled her eyes, if she’d had the energy. Lucifer thought she was making for the door. After all they'd been through, he still didn't get it. He looked back at his brother, an edge to his voice. “Not that you'd understand. All you ever want is their fear.”

He’d hit a nerve there, Michael’s voice rising in frustration. “You know that’s not true. _You_ most of all…”

She reached out for the corner of the bed, using it to pull herself forward. It was not much farther. She could do it. She _would_ do it, before Michael began to fight back.

Because he would fight back, eventually. It was all too obvious he’d allowed Lucifer to pin him down, knowing how weak his brother was. Knowing he could turn it around at any time. Chloe had seen it before, on all sides of her job. In the perps that knew they held the upper hand; in her colleagues that knew an all out confrontation was too risky.

Everything depended on getting there fast enough. Moments. She had moments.

She made herself listen again, forcing away the tired blur that came with processing their words. Crouched next to the oversized bed, she was hidden from their view, and only had the sound of their voices to gauge how long she had left.

There was a sigh as Michael composed himself, the return of that implacable calm all too chilling. “None of us can work out why you're doing it. What angle you're playing. Here. On Earth. For this long. I'd love to know… Gabriel thinks it's all a smokescreen, but I don't. And neither of us were ever particularly inclined to listen to Amenadiel. He was always a soldier, not a strategist. Not a thinker.”

“He does surprise on occasion, but I’ll grant you that one.” There was a pause. “And what do _you_ think, brother?” Lucifer’s voice surfaced from across the room, ragged, but intent - that same vicious charm he used on suspects now aimed at his brother. “Am I really that clever? Was it all just a trick? I know the view from on high isn’t always that clear. What deep, dark, terrible plot am I hiding?”  

He sounded so confident, all traces of that earlier weakness gone.

Not gone, Chloe realised. Masked. He was keeping Michael busy, holding his attention as much as possible. Buying time for her supposed escape. That was good. And likely the first time she was thankful for Lucifer’s grandiloquent monologuing. Talking was not fighting. Talking was good.

She was almost at the side table, the handle of the dagger just visible over its edge.

Michael’s response was fast and urgent. Lucifer definitely had his full attention. “I thought you could answer that.  I came here to talk to you-”

Praise be.

“Talk? That's what you call it? The pain I understand. I deserve that.” Chloe frowned at how easily he offered that up - he deserved _what?_ “But attacking the _Detective?_ An innocent, a human? I thought you said you weren't here to cause harm.” Lucifer let out another of those less-than-human growls, before continuing, voice dangerously low. “Though I suppose if it _was_ possible to talk someone to death that _would_ be in your skill set.”

“She- I wasn't expecting-” Michael faltered. “I would _never_ kill a human. Apparently, that's part of _your_ skill set.” He was losing his calm, letting that last barb land hard.

Chloe closed her hand over the dagger.

“Of course.” Her partner’s voice had gone raw, that crafted swagger and charm stripped away in favour of his rising ire. She didn’t have long. “What else did you expect? Did you forget what I _am_? I’m the Devil that you made me.” He was really winding up to a proper rant now, despite how exhausted he sounded. “And wasn't making me like this enough? You know I can never go back now. It’s done. It’s all done. Whatever good I’d mistakenly believed I was doing - whatever life I had. You may as well have killed me with your damn feather. You can't really have believed you were helping.” Michael tried to speak in the brief space he left there, but Lucifer cut him off, half-incoherent with frustration, fury, pain. “No, of course you did. You always know best, don’t you? You self-righteous, controlling, know-it-all, _cock_.”

She had never been so glad to hear him be so irritating.

It gave her the strength to crawl back around the bed again, towards their voices, keeping her head low. The sharp, curved edge of the dagger pressed into the plush carpet, leaving a vaguely dented trail as she pushed forwards.

“Don't be so melodramatic, Lucifer. You're used to a bit of pain. You couldn’t be killed that easily.” Michael sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that fact. “And from what I saw back above, your little human lawkeepers wouldn’t welcome you back, in any guise. Always too quick to blame us for your own mistakes. I saw the way you left. And I do know how your cat-and-mouse _detective_ game works. I watched them clean up after you. I watched them take what was left of Cain away - and you know what I saw in their dim little human eyes?” He let that sentence hang a moment, full of drama. Clearly their resemblance was more than skin deep. “I know it well, brother.” He dropped his voice low. “Fear,” he said, the word like ice. “Fear of what you'd done. You were never going back there. Even your demon has left you. I'm all you've got.”

Chloe squeezed the handle of the dagger even tighter. Michael had left her out of the equation. For all the watching he'd apparently been doing, he wasn't particularly observant.

She peered around the corner of the bed, not daring to breathe. The two of them hadn’t moved, still locked in that tense standoff, Michael on the floor and Lucifer kneeling over him. There’d been a shift in Lucifer’s posture though. He was looking away from her, away from his brother, with his shoulders slumped forward.

Michael wasn’t done. He pushed himself up. Lucifer flinched at the movement, his wings drawing tight. Michael poked at the sheet knotted around the broken one. “Look at you. Like a wounded _pigeon_. She bound you up? Your pet human?” Apparently he _had_ remembered her. Damn. “That’s generous,” he continued, “considering you dropped her out of the-"

There was a vicious, deep growl that cut that off, followed by the slam of Michael's head against the ground, Lucifer's hand gripping his collar.

“Don't,” Michael gasped out. “Don't make me fight you again. You'll lose. I’m tougher than Cain.” He looked slightly dazed from the force of that blow. “And how many more will you kill in her name? Half of humanity? The rest of us? Was this how it went with Uriel?”

Lucifer let go, flinching hard.

He’d been mid-retort, mouth open, ready to fire back, but he was utterly still now, pulled back into the darkness that name had summoned. His hands fell slack to his sides, as he stared at a spot on the carpet next to Michael. It was that same haunted stare from that case with the young brothers, the one that had affected him so much - from when he’d briefly talked about his past all that time ago, though Lucifer wore the expression now with different skin.

She knew that name. Uriel. The dead brother. She had to move.

“I didn’t- I didn’t mean-” Lucifer trailed off brokenly.

Michael punched him.

Neither brother registered the shallow cry she gave out, as she watched the force of the blow send Lucifer falling backwards, his unbound wing flapping uselessly. He threw out a hand to brace himself against the ground, gasping as he landed on a piece of that sharp porcelain. Michael snaked an arm out and snatched a fistful of his brother’s shirtfront, holding Lucifer up from the ground.

It was a sickening display of strength. Michael held him there so easily, with one hand.

And it was then, as Lucifer’s head tipped listlessly to the side, that he saw Chloe, crouched by the bed. The sheer panic that blazed in his eyes then was an awful, copper sear. He snapped his head back up to Michael, who was merely holding him in place.

For a second, he just looked up. But then his shoulders bunched together, and his unbound wing drew in tight.

“Lucifer, don’t-” Michael began.

“Then fight me,” Lucifer dared, in a deadly whisper, before grabbing hold of his brother’s shoulders and headbutting him hard enough to send Michael’s head whipping backwards.

The idiot.

Michael was even less impressed. He pulled Lucifer up closer, and shook him hard. “I’m not going to-”

He was cut off by another sharp jab from Lucifer’s closed right fist, followed by a kick that sent him rolling to the side, his hold on Lucifer’s shirt pulling both of them down. As Lucifer hit the ground, part of a wing bent against the carpet, the strained yelp causing Michael to pull back a bit, and release his grip.

 _Stay down_ , Chloe pleaded with her partner silently, as she edged in closer. _Don’t fight back._

Although, this was Lucifer Morningstar, who ignored every directive she’d ever given him, including the silent ones. He’d already flipped away, off the wing, and had an arm pushing himself up onto his side. The pain had to be horrific - it wasn’t the broken wing, but he’d still wrenched, or dislocated it, or … whatever it was that had happened in the air. There was no trace of that on his face though - just a tightness across the red skin that covered his brow, and an intense, unwavering focus on his brother.

“Lucifer. Stop.” Michael sounded slightly out of breath. He was leaning on one hand, shaking his head. “ _Stop_ ,” he repeated.

As Lucifer struggled to get up once more, Michael looked straight into his eyes.

“Don’t,” he warned, wiping at his face. The hand he replaced against the carpet left a bloody smear against the fine weave. From behind, there was a tightness to his posture, to where the muscles at the back of his neck lay taut beneath his curls, that was all too threatening. That icy calm was gone. Michael was ready to fight back.

Lucifer lifted himself up, raising two shaking fists defiantly. He kept the left one back a little, close to his chest.

Chloe bunched herself up, ready to move. If they ever got out of this, they were definitely going to work on improving Lucifer’s sense of self-preservation. She could see the bit of white sticking out of his palm, a shard from that broken lamp. There was fresh blood across the sheet binding his wing too, a dark stain seeping through the soft fabric.

Lucifer wasn’t going to take much more of this. Still, he was bringing the other fist forward fast, one desperate lunge-

“LUCIFER, _STOP_.” The raw power in Michael’s voice ripped through Chloe, leaving her bracing against the floor as if balancing on a tilting ship.

And Lucifer stopped.

Closed fist inches away from connecting once more, he’d frozen mid-action. His entire body was tense, the lines of muscle along his bare red arm pulled taught. He fell back against the carpet, panting, never taking his eyes off his brother.

Michael skidded backwards, away from him, confused.

“Lucifer…” he tried, watching the way his brother’s eyes followed him backwards, glowing a red so deep it was almost black. Michael sat back, apparently stunned into silence. He was only a few feet in front of her.

Lucifer didn’t move, though he was, very faintly, shaking. Those eyes were locked on his brother, wide. The expression on his face wasn’t difficult to read.

Terror.

“Lucifer,” Michael tried again. “You’re not…. How is that even possible? How could that possibly work on you?” There was no reply. Just that same, frightened stare.

He hadn’t even noticed her, though she was directly in his view. It was like his entire world had been reduced to Michael, prey to that same dread that had pinned her down earlier. Shut her down. Made her stop.

What was the opposite of drawing out someone’s deepest desire? Probably this. Withholding it. Stuffing it back in. The thought made her skin crawl.

Finally, Lucifer moved his lips and shaped a few words, the struggle of pushing back against Michael’s will evident in the slow drag of each syllable. “Nev… er. Use. That on me. Again,” he gritted out.

“I didn’t mean to-” Michael sounded badly shaken. “I’m sorry,” he began, then fell silent.

Lucifer just stared at him.

Michael crept forward again, into Lucifer’s space. His hand ghosted along the bound wing, lightly lingering on the place over the break, where that spreading stain was seeping through the sheet. He breathed out, low and hard, and grabbed Lucifer’s hand in a rush, the one Lucifer had been holding close, and spread it open. The little sliver of porcelain stood out, proud, from the base of his thumb. It was hard to see in the dim light, a slick gloss against that torn, red flesh, but there was a slow, steady drip welling from the wound.

“You’re bleeding?” He made the question into an accusation. Lucifer’s lips thinned in response.

Chloe could see Michael looking at the broken lamp, in pieces behind Lucifer, and then back to his brother’s hand. He stared at it hard, before abruptly plucking out the wicked shard. Lucifer inhaled sharply, and snatched his hand back, shuddering. He shrank into himself, wings tight, half-sprawled on the floor.

There was an odd shine where the fire lit up the profile of his scarred face, a glint of wet against his red skin. More blood? Chloe couldn’t see well enough to tell if he’d been injured anywhere else.

Why Michael was so horrified that he’d drawn blood was mystifying - they’d fought viciously, trying to take each other apart. He’d shown no real remorse for his earlier torture, however he’d tried to claim it was supposed to somehow help her partner.

Michael turned the little bit of porcelain over and over in his hand, running a thumb along its bloody edge. He held it up to the light, frowning. Abruptly, he stabbed it down hard into his opposite palm.

It was hard to see from her vantage point, but the tip seemed to glance off his palm, turned away like it had struck an invisible barrier. That was… that wasn’t right. She couldn’t have seen that right. Her fingers shook around their grip on the dagger.

She had to try. Whatever Michael was made of, she had to try.

Michael let the shard fall, turning back to his brother. “You’re not just different,” he breathed. “You’re mortal.”

There was a loud pop from the fireplace, the only sound in the utter stillness of the room. The brief flare of light gave Chloe a better look at her partner. At his face.

It wasn’t blood that tracked its way down his cheeks. It was realisation.

“I could make you return.” Michael stated it so quietly, inserting the words into the air with a hesitant reluctance. It didn’t need saying, but Michael said it anyway.

Lucifer closed his eyes at that, the wet streaks that leaked from their corners all the more obvious.

“You know I would never. I wouldn’t,” Michael added in a rush. “But this could fix you. I could use it… to fix you.” The note of hope at the end there was awful. “Please, just let me-”

“Don’t you dare,” Chloe breathed into the shell of his ear as she slid the curve of the dagger up under his neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished my degree! I spent a while being pretty burnt out, but I'm back now. Sorry. Maybe this was catharsis, I'm Lucifer and my final major projects were the feather. Fucking hell. 
> 
> Michael is such a dick. All of your comments about punching him secretly delighted me as I'd already written that part. I went back and added an extra punch per comment. 
> 
> I promised fluff, and it is coming next chapter. These guys really need a break. Also coming soon, a return to the outside world, and answers to what is going on back at the Precinct.


	10. FIDELITY

Wholly absorbed by whatever revelation he saw in his brother, Michael barely registered the blade at his throat. Or the tired, strung-out human being who wielded it.

Which made an unpleasant amount of sense. There was no guarantee Chloe could even hurt him. The bloody split along his cheekbone was encouraging, but then, Lucifer had given him that.

And Lucifer was, technically, also an archangel.

She was threatening an archangel.

The urge to laugh was traitorous. What was she doing? Even without the knowledge of _who_ exactly this was, the utter futility of pretending she was in control here loomed large. She’d never done this. Never threatened someone, from behind, with a blade.

Michael’s tight curls tickled the side of her face, making her want to pull away. That was not an option though; his taller frame made it necessary to grip his shoulders for leverage and kneel close, her dagger-wielding wrist more anchor-point than true threat.

This was nothing like holding a suspect at gunpoint. This was too close, too intimate. And it was real. The blade was _real_ , the keenest point of her own fractured awareness. Up against his throat, its sharp curve was more solid than her entire existence.

It was easier to focus on the weight of it in her hand, the weight of potentially _using_ it, than thinking about how she’d arrived here, or what came next. It was easier than thinking.

Than thinking about those wings.

Those silver, deadly, glorious wings.

So far, she hadn’t been flung across the room. A small victory; there’d been enough unscheduled flights today as it was.

But Michael could have had the decency to flinch. Or at least act surprised.

He was so quiet. So calm. Like he’d retreated behind a fortress wall of inviolate concentration, that brief foray into blindsided discomposure now fully sealed away, tight.

And he was so, very, aware. His attention filled every available space in the room – from the slumped curtains that concealed the balcony outside, and across the length of that plush, blood-spotted carpet, all the way to the heavy iron grate holding back the fire. Notably, it lingered on Lucifer, as if decoding a puzzle.

Apart from a vague shudder – the sort of subtle revulsion usually directed at wayward moths – her own presence had been barely acknowledged.

He had shut up, though. That was quite good.

More than good. The silence was a blessing, a blank space within which to erect some sort of basic defence – to regain the limits of her own place in the hierarchy of things.

It was space to regather and rebuild; to find proof she did indeed still exist. That she had a self to cling to, in the space between devil and angel. That she was still here, still present, on Earth, in this firelit hotel room, and that the existence of archangels, god and the divine had not in fact erased her own.

There was relief in that silence – Michael’s words were the root of Lucifer’s current defeat. Still, hushed as it was, the predatory vigilance contained within the limits of that fine, dark suit wasn’t much better. Beneath her grip, his coiled strength had settled into a ready, patient waiting, entirely focused on his subdued brother.

And where the base of her thumb dug in against his neck, she could feel his pulse – a relentless dull thud.

Steady. Solid.

Unlike her own. Hers was hammering up from the dark of that fear like a pick breaking through ice – fast, frantic and insistently alive. It pulsed along to the sound of rushing, sucking depth in her ears, growing louder by the minute, the background roar of a body that recognised the danger it was in. And it ached against the tightness in her lungs, where she should have been breathing.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Michael ball a fist up against the carpet.

Holding him back. She was holding him back.

Or just holding on.  

Maybe his complete dismissal of her was for the best. She’d prefer him to not pick up on how fiercely she was concentrating on keeping the small loop of the dagger hilt firm against his collarbone, her hand trembling with a volatile mixture of panic, lightheadedness and exhaustion.

Whether it was possible or not, accidentally cutting his throat was not going to improve things.

She made herself breathe, carefully. Evenly. Thinking was hard, but she needed a plan. To figure out what came _next._

She needed to get him away from Lucifer.

Lucifer, who had retreated beneath a ruined wing, almost obscured by the soft front of plumage he'd raised around himself.

She was struck by the size of the it; curled up protectively, the massive rise of the wing dwarfed the slender body beneath. His feathers stuck out at odd angles, looking strangely blunted and messy, the sleek fit she’d earlier marveled at lost in a cascade of bristling, uneven tension.

Standing on end, she realised. Puffed up like a bird trying to make itself appear bigger, though the state of Lucifer’s feathers lent the performance an air of desperation. There were so many missing; either shattered by the hail of bullets they’d endured, torn away by that desperate flight, or simply crumbled into nothing as their vitality faded, the life burnt out of them.

For her, Chloe thought. So many of those feathers had been lost for her. He’d fought for her, when he wouldn’t even fight for himself.

How had she ever earned that loyalty?

Chloe could just see the hint of red flesh between the tattered feathertips, where he’d drawn an arm up in front of his face. He had his eyes shut tight, and without the gleam of that inner fire, his state was difficult to gauge.

She wanted to reach out, to reassure. To push those soft shafts back into place, to smooth them out all over and clean away the blood and ash.

Even the dark ones.  

“Lucifer,” she called over Michael’s shoulder, softly, more a breath than a word.

Lucifer’s feathers flattened at the sound, falling into a more familiar shape. The bright points of his eyes were briefly visible, then lost again, surfacing and diving along the shore of consciousness.

But he was still there. And he could hear her.

Beneath her fingers, Michael’s shoulders tensed, but he remained in place, watching his brother with the distant attentiveness of a circling hawk.

Gradually, what was left of Lucifer's long primaries withdrew enough for her to see the man beneath. Sprays of blood decorated his once-white shirt, soaked in so deep around the cuff on his remaining sleeve that it was difficult to tell where the fabric ended and the red flesh of his hand began. Hunched against himself as he was, it was difficult to be sure, but she couldn’t see any new injuries.

The palm, then. That shard had gone in deep, and would definitely need attention, and probably the sacrifice of more fabric. Whereas the slash on his arm was relatively minor, considering how it had come about. And the binding on it still held.

He’d hate what had been done to his shirt.

Chloe would gladly have taken that indignation over the pained, wounded submission with which he finally, gently, lowered his wing, letting it splay out against the carpet. The feathers lay flat once more – not out of any sense of safety, that was clear. He’d simply gone to that place beyond fear, where the world was a muted, gentle blur.

Still falling. Still feeling whatever Michael had done.

That wasn’t going to happen again. He’d been pushed far enough. They both had.

She called her partner’s name again, drawing him out, slipping beneath the fragile guard he’d hoisted. This time, his eyes flickered and remained open, though he was staring at nothing, their dull red glow too much like the fading coals in the fireplace.

The other wing, the broken one, was out of view, but she’d seen all that blood earlier, soaked into that makeshift sling. The metallic tang of it was mixing with the traces of sulphur still in the air, making it all too clear the break had sustained further damage. He’d hidden it well, borne up by anger and frustration when he’d faced his brother. But now, that false strength had been ripped away, lost in the wake of the strange darkness Michael had inflicted.

And his face – he wore his pain far too openly, letting it twist the scars of his red flesh, stretched tight over that unfocused stare. Raw, exposed. Nothing of his usual facade left intact.

He looked awful.

Michael let out a long, low breath. “Lucifer,” he called, shifting forward, “I'm going to-”

Chloe pressed the end of the hilt hard into his chest, forcing him back. Hard enough to bruise.

To bruise a human, at least.

Michael half-raised his left hand in protest, towards where she held him, then seemed to change his mind, letting it hover in ominous prelude. “Do you mind?” he said quietly, still watching Lucifer. “This doesn’t concern you.”

Chloe gritted her teeth. Didn’t concern her. Right.

He was still speaking, now fully returned to that joyless arrogance. “I apologise for earlier, it was a reflex-”

“ _Don’t,_ ” she hissed. Even his apologies were obnoxious, bearing all the hallmarks of a perfunctory following of the rules without any true understanding of why they existed.

She was starting to see why Lucifer had so easily lost his composure, facing his brother. Michael was infuriating. She raised the dagger slightly, positioning it right at the base of his throat.

Michael huffed in annoyance, but dropped his hand. “Detective Decker. Is this anyway to treat your patron saint? You all used to be so obedient.” The rumble of his voice travelled through his back and into her chest, a low vibration that hummed against her ribs, rattling against the little knot of courage she’d crafted there.

She almost preferred being referred to by species. It was unnerving to discover he knew her name.

And her title. Hearing it spoken, with that accent. With that _face._ He had no right.

Somewhere in her dresser at home, there was a commemorative pin, the mandatory reward for a long-ago team-building exercise when she’d been a cadet. Saint Michael, the protector, patron of police everywhere.

The moment this was all over, it was going in the trash.

“Stay away from my partner.” She got it out in a low, steady growl, the five words strung together by the battling remnants of her sense of justice. He’d made a mistake there, after all, in using her title. He’d reminded her she was a cop.

He finally turned his head, lazily, to regard her. “Your partner? You _do_ realise what he is.” Chloe felt, more than saw him gesture at Lucifer. “How could you possibly...” he paused, arching his neck against the blade to get a better look at her face.

Some dim flicker of cognition made the connection that he needed to _look_ at someone to use whatever strange power he had. Just like Lucifer did.

Below, her knees had gone completely numb.

Too close. He was too close. The dagger slipped downwards slightly, but Michael didn’t seem to notice.

Chloe wanted to protest the way he frowned as he traced her own expression, his deep stare finding and keeping more than it should. But he’d pinned her there, with that stare, and it took everything she had to merely exist in its proximity. She trapped the small sound that threatened to escape her lips, corralling it behind her teeth like a cornered animal. She wouldn’t let him have that.

Not a sound. Silent. In control.

She had to face him. She had to hold on. She had to.  

“Detective,” he said, far more gently this time.

Her hand wavered. The nausea the word provoked, spoken with such familiar cadence, was almost too much. No right. That was not _his_.

“You’re free,” Michael went on. He’d dropped his voice even lower, threading it with something approaching kindness, though it was far too brittle and distant to ever be mistaken for such. “You can go. Whatever hold he had over you, he’s too weak to keep it up.”

And that _was_ too much. The short, sharp giggle that burst out of her without permission was uncompromising in its sudden arrival. She sincerely doubted Lucifer would ever have trouble _keeping it up._

Michael was looking at her like she’d gone mad. It was a fair point.

But, in its own demented way, the laughter was freeing. Lucifer made her laugh like that.

And Lucifer was _right there_ , barely conscious.

She could do this. And if she couldn’t. Well. She’d do it anyway.

Taking a breath, she met Michael’s stare with a hard one of her own. Through clenched teeth, past all of that fear, she fed him her ultimatum. “You. Need to go. Leave him. _Now._ Or I use this.” She let him feel the flat of the blade against the skin of his neck, moving it up into place once more.

It was reasonably steady, all things considered.

Michael scoffed. “Put that down. This is ridiculous.” The affront in his tone was all too _Lucifer_ , the same brand of wounded dignity she’d grown so used to over the past years. “Some little knife isn’t going to-”

The soft, dark laugh that travelled across the room was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard, though it was laced with pain.

They turned together, to look.

Lucifer was watching them from the floor, twin pricks of red winking in and out as he struggled to keep his eyelids up. The shallow breaths he sucked in past those cracked lips came at odd intervals, loud in the tense stillness of the dark room, the rasp of each one fluttering against the heavy air and weighing down her heart.

He was barely there.

But he was smiling, a grim, secret curve of lips that was aimed entirely at his brother.

“Oh it... is,” he said, coughing a little, before continuing. “ _Some_ little knife.” He’d focused his gaze just enough to trail the length of that dagger, landing on its end. Then he met her eyes, and let his own melt into something a shade warmer.

“Chloe,” he whispered, holding her there with those last bits of fading sunlight. “Don’t hurt him.”

She could feel Michael’s confusion, the shifting of his spine like a sudden change in the cardinal direction of the wind. “What? Brother, she’s not...”

But Lucifer was speaking again. Slowly, deliberately, as he let his eyes close once more. “Michael. Can’t you...” Another laboured breath, Michael straining to catch his every word. “Feel it? Against your skin. What it is.”

Michael carefully glanced down, to that same point Lucifer had focussed on, finally acknowledging the blade at his throat. There was a noise as he started to speak, a sort of wordless denial, that trailed away as he caught a glimpse of the dark hilt that Chloe’s fingers were wrapped around.

“Where it’s… from,” Lucifer finished, that red-lipped grin sharpening into something knowing, before he tilted a cheek towards the floor, apparently spent. His feathers spread wider, settling slack against the carpet.

Michael went utterly still. Slowly, deliberately, he brought a hand up, to lightly brush the flat of the dagger. His fingers hesitated in the air, caught at the cusp of his uncertainty, before they made contact.

The sharp breath he took as he jerked his hand back startled her. For a brief moment she lost her grip on his shoulders, sliding downward a fraction, before the vice grip of her other arm saved her.

He’d flinched. The bastard had actually flinched.

“Hey,” she said, trying to reposition herself. It was a particularly inept way to address an archangel, but she wasn’t quite up to saying his name. “Don’t mo-” she began, before the hot, slick trickle along the inside of her thumb entirely derailed the sentence, the thought, and reality as she knew it.

Oh.

Oh no.

She risked a look down.

Oh yes. He was definitely bleeding. The edge of the dagger had drawn the barest, hair-width line of red across his neck, the curve of it having just brushed against him.

Apparently it was very sharp.

She tightened her hold on his shoulders with all the tenacity of a limpet anticipating a king tide. This was where he tore her to pieces. Where he finally grew tired of the imposition of her tiny presence, and flicked her away once more. For good.

Well, it was just a nick.  Maybe he wouldn’t notice. She’d had worse paper cuts, she was sure. Compared to the split on his cheek it barely rated.

He was fine.

But he didn’t look fine.

He’d gone very pale, watching her with his head held stiffly in place, eyes flicked to the side, their whites stark against the deep well of his pupils. Like this, the resemblance to Lucifer was painful, spelled out in the profile of that proud nose, those sculpted cheeks, the lift of his brow. For a moment he seemed as human as she’d believed her partner had been, the shadows entirely dispelled, the slack incomprehension in his expression a mixture of shock, dismay, and something far more mundane.

Fear?

Chloe frowned at the cut, trying to work out how she’d produced such a reaction.

It really wasn’t that bad. Though little trails of blood were wending their way down towards his shirt collar, the furthest one coating the inside of her hand, and beginning to run along her wrist. Which was incredibly irritating – the sticky wetness impossible to ignore. Without meaning to, she rubbed her wrist inwards, trying to ease the sensation.  

“Alright,” Michael rushed out, eyes wide. “ _Alright_. It’s… I’m not-”

The muscles along his jaw had twitched as she’d moved her wrist, but he kept himself still, his throat barely moving as he pushed out some half-formed words.

Chloe blinked, realising he’d taken her movement as threat. She’d been about to reflexively apologise, some of her de-escalation training belatedly kicking in, but he was evidently taking her seriously now.

 _Very_ seriously, judging by the way the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up.

Chloe was definitely not apologising.

“That’s right. You’re _not_ ,” she whispered into his ear instead. “You’re leaving.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed, where they watched her side-on. He didn’t like that. Being given orders.

Visibly rallying his foundered authority, he addressed her. “Chloe. Put the blade _down_.” Stern. In control once more, though he remained frozen in place.

Apparently she was on first-name basis with _two_ archangels now. It was a calculated lever too, pried savagely against her fragile selfhood. Clearly he’d noticed the reaction he’d gotten before, using her name, and was throwing everything he had into the advantage.

There was something else to those words too, a shadow behind each syllable, and a weight to the focus he'd fixed her with. She could feel it – he was trying to suppress her. To make her _stop._

It wasn't working. The fear didn't belong to _him_ any more. It was her own. She was in control of it.

“Put it _down_ ,” he repeated, overly firm. “You've made your point. And we both know you won't do it.”

And though he had mustered an amount of that familiar haughtiness, coating himself in the armour of that supreme arrogance, it was not particularly successful either. The nervous rise at the end of his sentences were a complete give-away.

Lucifer was far better at that trick.

“Are you sure?” she asked him, deliberately wiggling her hand a little more to ease the itch at her wrist. The tack of his drying blood against her skin was extremely unpleasant, but shifting her grip made her notice something else.

There was a different quality to the throb of his pulse, where her thumb was lodged against his throat. Fast. Irregular. Racing.

“Are you sure I won't?” she asked again, still right into his ear, and then pulled back to see his face.

He wouldn’t meet her eyes, the muscles in his neck working as he swallowed. A fresh bead of red formed at one end of the thin cut.

He wasn't. He wasn't sure at all.

She caught him glancing down at her wrist. “You won’t. You’re John Decker’s daughter. It's not how you were made.”

So he'd _really_ done his homework. Lovely.

Well, that worked too.

“I will,” she replied. “If you do know me, then you'll know I'll do what I have to. Whatever it takes.” It was roughly the truth, but the majority of it was the remnants of drunken bravado speaking. She was incredibly tired. Many things, like logic, common sense, or even her usually healthy sense of self-preservation had fled in the face of the intense strain of the day.

The fear was still there though, coiled in wait. Those silver wings lit up the back of her mind, threatening to burst forth and coat the inside of her skull with bright, painful glory. There was no forgetting who she was threatening.

He wasn’t forgetting it either. Behind his eyes, something flashed silver. “I could kill you before you even-”

“But you won't.” She cut him off, the answer retrieved from some deeper place that had listened while he’d fought his brother. “Because you would never kill a human. You just said so, before.”

Michael closed his mouth. Internally, she threw a parade for the functioning part of her brain.

This was intoxicating. But she couldn’t hurt him. Not intentionally, at least. Lucifer had told her not to, and it wasn't who she was, however effective her dusty acting skills were proving.

There was a long pause, filled only with the sound of the settling coals across the room. Michael watched them burn lower, apparently finding some truth in their waning heat.

“What are you going to do,” he said finally, returning to glance downwards at her wrist. “With that.” She could feel how carefully he was holding his neck up, away from the blade.

Great question.

“I don’t know,” she answered, honestly. “I have had a _really_.” She paused for emphasis. “ _Bad_ day. And I’m _tired.”_

Michael definitely didn't like that answer. “This is not- You can't just-” He stopped, visibly revising the direction of his thoughts. “You’re not under his control. So why are you doing this? What do you _want?”_

It was eerily close to what Lucifer asked, when he used that strange gift to draw out someone’s true desire. The earnest intensity caught her off guard.

So she answered in kind. All barriers down. “I want him safe. From you.”

He finally looked up at her, vaguely shocked. “From me? You want him safe from... _me?_ ”

“Yes. _You_.” Had she not been clear?

There was only his slow, uncertain blink, followed by the deepening crease of a frown on Michael’s brow as warning, before the world tilted sideways.

Faster than she could track, he had pulled her arm down and away, slipping out of her hold with all the surgical precision of a military pilot flying through a warzone. She was on the floor, and he was across the room, scrambling away from her – and _away from Lucifer_ – before she could fully register what had happened.

 _Lucifer_. Not taking her eyes off Michael’s retreating form, she lunged over in her partner’s direction. Reaching the end of his wing, she sat up next to it, with the bloodied edge of the dagger outward. Ready. Waiting.

But Michael hadn’t turned around. He’d reached the fireplace, kneeling next to her discarded clothing, his hands braced against the top of the grate.

The _red hot_ top of the grate. Chloe knew just how hot it was, from when she’d lit that fire. And Michael was gripping it with his bare hands, like it was nothing.

His shoulders were hunched in though, arrested at the beginning of that wing-releasing roll. He held them so stiffly that she almost missed the way they were shaking, just slightly.

She buried her free hand in the midst of Lucifer’s soft feathers, wanting him to know she was there, even if he was most likely passed out. And, for the not insignificant amount of reassurance it gave her, knowing he was right there too.

“I told you to go,” she aimed at Michael’s back. Bravery was easier now that he was facing away from her. That, and she was just too exhausted to be afraid.

The reply was instant, and pointed, only slightly muffled by his posture. “And I told him I wasn’t here to fight. If he’d just listened- but no. That’s not what he does. He only hears what he wants to hear, and now he’s mortal, it has to be too late.” His shoulders drew in further. “Oh Father, what if it’s too late?”

Was he even talking to her? Or talking to himself?

“But I have to try. To make him return, to enact Father’s will. He’s my responsibility. My burden. He's my _brother_.” The statement was made towards the fire. It was unclear whether Michael meant it as explanation for his actions, or as something purely possessive, something that gave him the right to do as he had.

It might have even been regret.

He turned his head to the side a little, the glow from the red coals lighting him from below. “You have no idea what I’ve done to be here. You couldn’t. You’re _human._ There are things he doesn’t know. Things he needs to know.”

That sounded like negotiation. Which was unnecessary – Chloe had already stated her terms.

“I don’t care,” she replied. “I’m not going to let you near him.”

Michael whirled around to face her, still gripping the grate with one hand. The other, he lifted to his neck, to that cut. Horrified.

“I’m trying to _save_ him. He’s my _brother._ I have to save him before it’s too late.” He practically yelled it, completely unravelled.

“The only person he needs saving from is _you,”_ she bit back, just as fierce.

The flash of hurt on Michael’s face was entirely unfeigned. “You think I’m trying to _harm_ him? _None_ of us are his enemy. We never were. The only real enemy he’s ever had is himself. Look.” His voice grew shrill, drops of his own blood flying off the tips of his fingers as he stabbed them at Lucifer. “ _Look_ at what he did to himself. He wears the burns I gave him like they’re freshly earned, and yet they healed eons ago. He crippled his wings, hacked them apart. Tore off his own flesh. _He put out his own light._ How could anything we’ve ever done to him be worse than _that_? My punishment was far kinder than what he did to himself. At least it had an end.”

He finally paused for breath, panting as he leaned against the fireplace. His right cuff was smouldering gently, where he’d held it too close to the heat.

 _“_ You-” she tried. But he was ranting. Flat out ranting.

“Suffering is what he is. _Pain_ is what he is. I should have been able to heal his wings, at least. If not the rest of it. But he’s too corrupted. He’s poison. He’s _the Devil_. And he made himself that way, no matter how much he believes Father pushed him to it. He chose to be that way. _He fell because of it._ ”

It should have been terrifying. Instead, it was strangely serene. She floated through the eye of a storm, riding along at the tip of Lucifer’s wing, sinking into the truth of it. Michael believed what he was saying. That Lucifer had chosen darkness.

She dug her fingers in close, wanting the heat of the flesh beneath those feathers, the strong rise of the bone that they were built around. Those wings had carried her, shielded her. Protected her. Michael had gotten it so wrong.

He was snarling through his words now. “I tried to break him out of it. I tried to _burn it out of him_.” There was a rending, twisting snap as part of the iron grate broke off in his grip. “But he’s lost in the dark. And you're lost too, if you’ve sided with something so evil.”

There it was. The word that snapped it all back into focus. The word that made it all make sense, buried at the bottom of the chaotic maelstrom.

Chloe ran her hand along Lucifer’s wing bone, letting her fingers drift through the soft, secret down hidden beneath the largest feathers.

“He’s not.” She should have stayed silent, but the denial slipped out of her anyway. “He isn’t like that. He's not evil.”

Michael stared at her, incredulous. “Do you truly believe that? I can't tell if you're merely a fool, or if you're in on it.”

“In on what?” she asked, as if he’d prompted her. He wanted to talk, and she was inclined to let him. If it kept him _over there._  

The dagger rested in her lap now, held against the bare skin on her thigh. Michael kept it carefully in sight, as he supplied the answer, matter-of-fact. “All of Heaven and Earth know what he is. And he knows it himself, judging by that awful mask he wears. So either you're oblivious – or you're part of his trick. Part of his lie.”

Part of his- what was Michael suggesting? That she'd been duped. That Lucifer had misled her. That was what the storied Devil did, wasn't it? The Deceiver. It was suddenly painfully obvious how little Michael understood his wayward brother.

“He doesn't lie.” She'd already threatened to kill him. She figured she may as well lay it all out there. “And listening to the way you talk – not to mention how okay you seem to be with torturing your own brother – I'm wondering whether the world doesn't have it backwards.” Where was this courage coming from? “Whether the one we should have feared all along was you.”

Michael was still for a moment, watching her. Then a tic, under his eye. A complex twisting of his mouth, the brief baring of his teeth. The duck of his head as he looked away from her.

She’d struck a nerve, satisfyingly raw. He hid it by standing abruptly and turning away, but the tightness in his posture was as plain a marker as any, as was the lack of reply. She’d scored a hit, and brought about that beautiful silence once more.

He crossed the room, coming to a halt beside the low shelf by the entranceway.

 _That’s it,_ Chloe thought. _Keep going._

But he stood there, contemplating the contents of that shelf. Quiet, in his reassembly. “And you think you know me?” he muttered, after a long pause. “You think you know us?”

He’d drawn the shadows back around himself like a cloak, at the far end of the room where the firelight didn’t reach. His position was easy to make out though, pinpointed exactly by the silver glow in his eyes when he looked back at her.

It was easier, with him further away, to remember that she could meet that stare and remain breathing. “I know you hurt him,” she said, trying to regain some ground. “With your... feather. And you… controlled him. Somehow.” There was no word for what that was. “That’s enough.”

Please let it be enough. He had to stop.

There was a sigh, in the dark. A sad thing. “Maybe. Maybe it is. I… took away his choice.” In a voice that seemed far too small for who he was, he added, “I didn’t know he was mortal.”

He needed to stop. Why wouldn’t he stop. Chloe’s head was pounding, the tingling, drifting sensation as she forced herself to remain upright a significant distraction.

Michael wasn’t done though, the rest of his response coming to her sounding far too rational, far too considered. Now that it had cooled, his frustration was needle-sharp, pricking at the boundaries of her comprehension. “But he asked me to. He begged me not to leave him that way. I had to try. To do what needed to be done.” She could see him tilting his head, cold silver regarding her from that black extremity. “I thought you said you knew what that meant. Whatever it takes.”

Beneath her hand, a feather came loose. She relaxed her grip immediately, afraid she’d hurt Lucifer. She did know. She knew exactly what Michael meant.

Whatever it took. For Lucifer, it meant his letting go, letting her fall from the abyss of the sky to land safely, while he paid a hard, terrible price for it. It meant the sacrifice of his wings, as he shielded them both from a literal hail of bullets. It meant killing for her, killing when it cost him so much. And probably countless other things.

He’d always known, and he’d always done it without hesitation. And now she knew too.

Michael took a few steps back towards her, and stopped before the fire. He regarded her, letting his eyes fade back into the dark.

Clasped at his side, he held a small object he’d selected from that shelf. A book, a thin paperback, the glossy cover glinting as it caught the light.

Then he held it up, opened it half-way, and slowly tore a page out. The raspy, jagged sound as the paper came free was an awful, violent trespass. It ripped against her edges, reducing her. She hunched back, pulling the dagger up close to her chest.

He examined the page, a cursory glance, before screwing it up and tossing it straight into the fire behind him in one fluid movement. Chloe’s eyes were drawn to the flare of light as it hungrily reared up around the page, bright tongues of yellow licking over it until it was gone.

Michael fixed her with a level stare, running an absent finger along the red line at his throat, the book still open in his other hand. “Might have been a good read, but it’s just a few words.” Behind him, the flames guttered out, returning the room to near-black.

He tore away a few more pages, rapidly this time, and tossed those in too. And continued, in that calm, lecturing tone as the flames found each page. “The fire consumes them faster than even I could read them. It’s bright for a moment, but look.” He threw the entire book in, where it landed with a dull thud and a shower of red sparks. The cover immediately began to curl against itself, yellow flames dancing across it. “The one that wrote that was outlived by those pages. It’s a clever way to reach beyond, to preserve. But even that goes, too. Brief. Already gone.”  

He let it burn for several minutes, while Chloe’s eyes swam at the sudden brightness. The flames roared up to claim their prize, dazzling. When they reached the heart of the book and turned it black, they were highest.

All around her, the room had taken on a shifting, darting realism as all of its parts were revealed. There were her things, spread out before the fire. And the white rug, flecked with red.  A huge television, atop a white cabinet. A lounge chair, a lamp. A wilted, potted plant. The door to the balcony, draped in the same burgundy folds as the windows. The doorway out, still ajar. The heavy iron grill she’d moved, to get to the fireplace.

And over the fire, the mantlepiece bore an ornate carving, featuring the twisted letters J.W.H at the heart of a rippling, radiant sun. It was ostentatious, unmissable.

Perhaps she’d noticed before, as she’d searched for materials to dress Lucifer’s wings. Perhaps she’d even wondered at it. But now she stared at that carving, wondering how much more was hidden right before her eyes, all because the quality of the light had been wrong.

Because she’d been looking down, when she should have been looking up.

Abruptly, the flames died and went out, leaving the coals burning red and angry, as if denied a meal. The book was a pile of ash.

Michael’s voice drew her back inwards, back to his shape. Looming over her, it was rimmed by that red glow, and utterly black. He gestured behind him. “That was his gift to you, of course. The fire. Illumination. The bright flash of knowledge, creation and destruction in one. A lovely gift, not that it was his to give.” He stepped over, next to the fire, where the remaining logs were stacked. “But permanence.” Kneeling, he selected two of the larger ones, and hefted them across, onto the coals. “That’s mine.”

Still kneeling, he pushed back one sleeve and reached towards the fire.

The logs were too large. Chloe knew that. That was why she hadn’t used them earlier. Still, she was unprepared for the hard slam of Michael’s fist against the larger one, the sharp crack as the wood caved in beneath his hand a brutal, severe shock. Coals scattered at the blow, but remained in the fireplace, neatly contained.

Michael left his hand in place, resting atop the log. He’d made a significant dent in the top of it. With his _fist_. Chloe watched, as tendrils of smoke leaked around the edges of the wood. Flames began to eat at its sides, and along that cleft.

She’d held a blade to his throat. She’d held him there, while he could do that.

That could have been her neck.

Relentlessly, he explained. “Some things are brief. This, however.” Around his fingers, up past his wrist, the flames began to dance. “This will burn all night.” He looked back at her, implacable. Thoughtful. “You don’t understand me, I can see. Not yet. But you will, and that will terrify you far more than my little gift ever could.”

She had no answer to that, as the dagger slid out of her grip, forgotten.

“And you’ll be gone. You’ll leave. Look at you. You can barely comprehend what I’m saying.” He withdrew his hand, brushing away the ash and sliding his sleeve back down.  “Your kind don’t understand loyalty. What it means to serve another. To put them first. You’ll leave.” The other log was starting to catch now, caught up in the heat of the first. He nodded at it, standing. “But I will never. No matter how far he falls.”

He strode past her, crossed over to the door and stepped through. Dragged it shut with a soft click.

And was gone.

Chloe slid to the floor, curling herself against Lucifer’s wing.

Michael was gone.

She lay there for some time, on her side, watching Lucifer’s slack face in the light of that fire, while the soft length of his wing rested against her legs. The room seemed far smaller now, diminished, with only the two of them there.

But they were both still there. Alive.

Her hand was still buried amidst those feathers. She let it drift, stroking her way along a long, black primary, letting the dark vanes ripple past her fingertips.

Evil?

No. Never. No matter how often he’d tried to tell her. She could fit all of it together, in pieces, eventually. All of the wild madness, all of it true. That there were wings, and that a Devil had fallen, and that he’d been burned in punishment by his own brother. That there was a god, and a heaven, and a place her father had gone.

But she would never believe Lucifer was evil.

The heat in the room was so soothing. It was sinking into her, into her bare skin, matched by the gentle intrinsic warmth of those feathers. The carpet felt unbelievably good beneath her too, but it was not enough.

Sliding a hand under the wing, she lifted it enough to insert herself beneath it. Wriggling forwards, she found a place where she fit, beneath that beautiful, impossible cascade, and let it cover her. Moved herself right under it. Close to him.

His red eyelids fluttered. So he was still there, barely.

And he had to be in pain. She made herself take note of him, reaching for that injured hand. It was limp in her grip, and only part of the problem.

Just a bit more. She just had to be there just a little longer, before she could rest.

“Hey,” she whispered. “What do I do?” She couldn’t tell how bad the wound in his palm was, with how sticky her own hands were. Letting it drop back between them, she let her knuckles drag along the underside of the wing over her, trying to give him something to focus on.

There was no response, but for the smallest, gradual curve of his lips on that torn, red face. Subtle. But it was sheer pleasure, even in the face of what he had endured. His feathers rippled with it, and she decided it didn’t matter what colour they were, or how the sift of ash was brushed away as she smoothed them down.

They were beautiful.

She wound an arm around him, and pulled him close. The wing spread over her, relaxed and soft, the peace of those spread feathers still intact despite all they had suffered.

An angel wing. She was falling asleep underneath an angel wing.

That jolted her awake again. Not falling asleep. The broken wing. It needed rebandaging. She had to-

“Mmmph,” was the soft protest as she tried to shift over to look at it. The arm that slid up to rest against the small of her back and keep her lying close was a similar, more insistent protest. Okay. So he wasn’t entirely out of it.

“I have to. Lucifer.” She made her case to the smooth crown of his head, where he’d tucked it in against her chest. “Lucifer. Your wing. You’re bleeding.”

There was another small murmur, the tightening of his hold on her. And two small, miraculous words, pulled out of him like they were the grand total of his remaining existence.

“Just… stay.”

That was what finally did it, at the real end of the day. After everything she had been through. Those two words were the tipping point.

After begging her to leave, after being so sure she’d want to go, Lucifer was asking her to stay. The tears felt strangely light on her cheeks, like they were made of something far less mundane than salt and water.

Reaching up past his shoulder, she found the place where the wing emerged, and drew lines along it, down his back. Gentle. Repetitive. “I’m here,” she told him. “I’m here.”

His breathing evened out, against her chest, hypnotic puffs of contentment as she murmured encouragement. “Just breathe. Shhh.” She brushed a thumb across his closed eyelid, feeling the tack of half-dried tears. Her own eyelids flickered, dream heavy.

She would just close her eyes for a moment, and then try to fix that wing. She would just close her eyes, and sink into that soft heat, where Lucifer was wrapped around her, and over her, and they were carrying each other, soaring and never falling.  

She would just close her eyes, and fly.

 

*

 

Dan was three coffees into the morning, but the world still wasn’t making sense. He glanced back across the precinct, to where Chloe’s desk sat empty. Even at this early hour it was the only quiet spot in the entire building, following the previous day’s events.

She’d be okay. She had to be. This was _Chloe_.

He’d been up half the night, waiting for her to come home. He’d lied to Trixie, putting her to bed with promises that her mother was fine.

She had not been fine at all on the phone, though she’d told him so. She’d sounded terrified.

Dan had spent hours replaying her words over and over in his mind, trying to figure out the significance of her mentioning the bible. Was it code? Had she been asking him for something? Why was Lucifer’s phone still off? Why hadn’t either of them surfaced, made contact?

Was someone, or something, preventing them? She’d said Lucifer was hurt.

What if they’d both been taken, at the scene of Pierce’s death. What if Pierce’s guys had them. What if they had _Chloe._

It was a long way before dawn when he’d finally admitted defeat and gone back into work. In the chaos of Pierce’s death, nobody cared about the forced leave he’d been subjected to. Like him, they all just wanted answers. To know how their department had been led by someone so corrupt. To know what had really happened to Charlotte Richards.

To know where their star Detective and her Consultant had gone.

And if Chloe was being held somewhere against her will, Dan had to move fast.

At the very least, there was progress about to be made, as several higher-ups filtered their way through into the interrogation room. Dan had been invited to watch, and though Ella had pleaded with him to take a look at what she’d found, that could wait.

He wanted to hear what Pierce’s lackey had to say. He wanted to hear how the bastard justified working for someone so evil. They’d left the guy bound up long enough, and once he’d been informed his boss was dead, he’d rolled over for a plea bargain immediately, happily turning informant.

It was encouraging. It was a lead.

But despite the presence of those executive officers - and the _feds_ \- despite the intense scrutiny they all had the guy under, something was not right about him. Dan watched through the glass, trying to figure it out.

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” Pierce’s lackey was visibly nervous, which was understandable for a man turning on his employer, but the way he kept glancing at the audio recording felt off.

Dan didn’t like it at all. He’d brought the guy down to the station, after covering the scene of Pierce’s death. Weird as it was, he’d seen what had played out, clear in the details.

It was immediately obvious that the late Lieutenant had struggled with Lucifer and lost - after all, Dan knew the guy could fight. And he knew Chloe and Lucifer had gone in there, straight into an ambush. It made sense.

What worried him was the rest of the story. There had been bloody feathers everywhere, and a huge hole in the window, that led out onto nothing on the third story.

The glass had broken inwards. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a gigantic bird had smashed through the building and been shot to pieces by at least eight armed men. Somehow, Pierce had then been stabbed, by a weapon that had cleaved through his ribcage like it was butter.

The bullet they’d found in Pierce had been a police discharge too, and hadn’t matched Pierce’s gun.

Chloe’s gun, however, discarded on the floor, had made it very clear how that had come about. First on the scene, he’d kicked it away, and later grabbed it, no one the wiser.

After that, she’d been unreachable. Dan hadn’t been able to call her, or Lucifer, or even Maze. Everyone had just… vanished.

Until that incredibly unsettling phone-call.

He hoped Chloe was okay, and that this was all just the anxiety of the last few days making him see things that weren’t there. Lucifer had probably taken her to Vegas, or something equally inappropriate, coercing her into leaving that crime-scene with a much needed holiday.

Yeah right, who was he kidding. He knew her better than that.

Pierce’s gun had been fired a number of times, and they hadn’t accounted for all of those bullets. They could be lodged in one of those ugly statues - or they could be lodged in _someone_.

He forced himself to pay attention as another officer he didn’t recognise, a tall monolith of a guy, sat down in the room with their informant, and the interview began.

Dan zoned out through the first few questions, all routine, until the new officer in the room asked a question that hadn’t been in the prep.

“Can you give us the name of the Sinnerman, and all of his known associates?” said the tall guy, totally off script.

That wasn’t right. They knew it was Pierce. Charlotte’s research was evidence enough.

As if that last question was a signal, the informant’s manner changed completely. Gone was the nervous, hesitant voice, the shrinking shoulders and refusal to look up. Now he spoke confidently, head forward like he was the one in charge.

“In exchange for the deal you’ve offered, I can tell you exactly who he is. He’s been under your nose the whole time.”

The lackey grinned, and turned his head towards the glass that Dan stood behind. There was something terrifying in that grin, as if it bore the fruit of years of studying Dan’s fears.

When he spoke next, Dan was expecting it, but the chill that ran down his spine was no less intense.

“His name is Lucifer Morningstar.”


End file.
